


Forearmed

by VampireBadger



Series: Forewarned is Forearmed [5]
Category: Persona 4, Persona 5
Genre: Akechi has no idea what's going on, Akira was raised in Inaba AU, Found Family, Found Family is Tested, Gen, More characters to be added, Not Beta Read, Persona 5 Rewrite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 36
Words: 398,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24842014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampireBadger/pseuds/VampireBadger
Summary: When Akira was eleven years old, he came to Inaba, where he fell into a TV and awoke his Persona for the first time.Five years later he is arrested and shipped off to Tokyo. There, he finds a Velvet Room that doesn't seem quite like the one he remembers, Lavenza missing, and a whole new world of Shadows--and this time, there's no Investigation Team to help save the day.He never could learn how to stay out of trouble.
Series: Forewarned is Forearmed [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1767610
Comments: 2090
Kudos: 1779
Collections: Marigolds Discord Recs





	1. March 14 - March 26

_March 14_

_Evening_

-//-

"Can you tell me," the police detective says. "What the exact circumstances were behind your assault of that man earlier this evening?"

Akira does not answer. His eyes--slightly confused behind his glasses--are fixed on the table in front of him, mind racing at the implications behind that simple question.

Assault? That's not what happened.

"I asked you a question," the detective says, and although the words themselves are polite, the tone is sharp, and cold. 

"I'm sorry," Akira says, shaking his head. He forces himself to relax, to fight off the urge to look nervous. Looking nervous will make him seem guilty whether he is or not, and he _definitely is not._ "I just--I didn't assault anyone."

"A report has been filed," the detective informs him. "Naming you _very_ clearly as the culprit."

"It's a misunderstanding," Akira says. He fights to keep his voice calm, and watches the man on the other side of the desk intently from behind his glasses, trying to get a read on him. This police detective is not one that he's ever seen before. It's not Dojima, or any of the local detectives that work with him out of the Inaba police station. This is a stranger, a detective from nearby Okina City, and there's something in his tone that makes Akira _nervous_.

"There's no misunderstanding," the detective says. "As I said, the report is very clear."

"But it's not what happened," Akira says. "The man was drunk, and trying to force a woman into his car with him." The man was someone Akira hadn't recognized--not from Inaba, he doesn't think. There's something in the accent that's just a little too _big city_ , and something in the clothes that's just a little too _polished_. The woman he'd been trying to hurt, though, Akira _had_ recognized. A teacher at the elementary school, one of those people whose family has been in Inaba since possibly the beginning of time.

Akira's seen her before. Around. He hadn't known her, and had never even spoken to her before today.

But what that guy had been trying to do to her was wrong, and Akira wasn't going to just walk past that and not try to help.

"I heard her calling for help," Akira says. "She was trying to get away--I told the guy to let go of her, and he... I think he was turning around to yell at me, or something. But he fell, and that's when he hit his head."

"He... _fell_ ," the detective repeats, managing to inject an almost impressive amount of skepticism into just two words.

"He did," Akira insists.

"He says that you pushed him," the detective says. "That he was simply walking down the street with an acquaintance when you approached and became violent."

"That's not what happened," Akira says. 

"He further states that you assaulted him directly--"

"It's not true, you can ask--well, there wasn't anyone else around, but you can ask her, at least. The woman he was with."

"And her statement," the detective goes on, raising his voice very slightly so he can keep talking over Akira's protest. "Agrees with his exactly."

Akira stares at him, not at all sure how to react to this. It's--it's just not _true_ , and maybe he can understand if that guy had lied to try and keep himself out of trouble, but why would the woman he was trying to hurt say the same thing? 

"Nothing to say for yourself?" the detective asks.

For several long seconds, Akira doesn't. For the past five years, ever since he first came to Inaba as part of a sort of exchange program, he's been living with a police detective--with Dojima, who has shown him by example what it means to be part of the police force.

He knows that what _this_ detective is doing, is all wrong. Dojima, or _any_ of the detectives in Inaba, would have listened. They might not have believed him at first, they might have needed more evidence, but they would have at least _looked._ They wouldn't have just picked their favorite witness and decided that any contradicting testimony must be a lie.

Akira does not know how to deal with what suddenly feels very much like he's being framed.

"I didn't do it," he says again, after a pause that probably makes him seem even more guilty. "I didn't hurt _anyone_."

"Right," the detective says dismissively. "Of course not. He tripped, and _fell_. Isn't that right?"

Akira says nothing. In the face of that concentrated scorn, there's nothing _to_ say. 

There are no words that will get through to this detective, and convince him that Akira's account of what happened today is the true one.

"Someone will take you back to the holding room," the detective says, standing and going to the door. "I'll be calling your parents, and consulting with a few people. After that, you'll be formally charged with the assault."

He keeps talking, but Akira isn't listening anymore. The detective is going to call his parents--or, to be more accurate, the detective is going to _try_ to call his parents. And when he tries, he's going to find that Akira's parents are dead, that he's been lying about it since before he even got to Inaba, and falsifying every official form he's ever had to fill out that asked for his parents' information.

He has no idea how much trouble he's about to get into, but the answer is probably _a lot_.

The detective has stopped talking, Akira realizes, and is now just staring at him, waiting for some kind of answer. He has no idea what the question had been, he hasn't been able to process a _single_ word for at least a minute, and there's only one thing that he can think of to say.

"I didn't do it," he tells the detective.

The man snorts in a derisive, disbelieving way, and leaves the interrogation room.

The door slams closed behind him, locking with a loud _click_.

Akira takes a deep breath and lets it out. His lowers his hands into his lap to hide that they're suddenly shaking, and squeezes them into fists so tight they turn white.

-//-

_March 14_

_Evening_

_-//-_

Not far from the bare room where Akira sits and protests his innocence, a tall, bald man with a _truly_ impressive bruise on his left temple paces angrily through a hotel room.

His name is Masayoshi Shido.

He is not a nice man.

"I need damage control," Shido snarls. He'd been drunk earlier in the evening, but the adrenaline of being caught by some--some _kid,_ and the sharp pain of falling hard and face first--has shocked him right back into sobriety. "And I need it _now_."

"Sir!"

It's an underling--one of the faceless clerks that keeps his records, handles his appointments, even travels with him to the middle of absolute _nowhere_ when he needs to attend asinine fundraisers.

"What is it?" he demands.

"Sir, I--the police department just sent over the boy's record. They're going to push the assault charge through, but... well, they had to pull some paperwork and... and there's something you need to see."

The snarling, pacing politician stops dead in his tracks, reaching for the thin folder. He reads for about thirty seconds, and then his face darkens. "You have to be joking," he says.

"Unfortunately not," the aid says. "I double checked with your personal records before bringing this to your attention. The boy's parents died five years ago. No obvious heirs or executors. As is customary, the state appointed an administrator, and--and at that point you were calling in favors to be assigned exactly this kind of file, to... _redirect_ funds from places no one would miss them."

"There's nothing illegal about it," Shido says sharply. "When someone passes with no heirs, the government has claim to their estate."

Of course, if those government claimed funds happened to be directed toward _his_ projects, or even eventually laundered through semi-legitimate purchases into his personal campaign funds... well, it wasn't _traceably_ illegal, anyway. He'd made sure of that at the time.

"But there was an heir, in this particular case," his aid points out. "This boy. And if anyone starts to look into him-- _really_ look into him--they'd find what you did."

A moment--just a beat--of silence follows, as the implications of this statement is processed. _He'd missed this_. And the government appropriating an estate that should have rightfully been inherited by a minor certainly _is_ illegal.

Then comes the anger. Not a hot anger, which would have been easy for his aide to read, and to respond to. This is a cold and calculating anger, which in its own way as much more frightening than anger might be. Cold anger means that this kid has become more than just _inconvenience._

Shido says nothing, but the expression and color of his face speak volumes.

"If the kid just goes away," the aide says, slowly and carefully. "I don't think anyone would take the time to actually look into his records. He's just some orphaned kid--the welfare system is strained as it is. No one will make the time and the effort to look far enough into his past to connect him to you."

"But if the kid _doesn't_ just shut up and go away," the politician snaps. "There's a chance someone might."

His aide nods. "There's always the chance that if he keeps claiming innocence, and makes enough of a stir, someone might start digging into his record."

Shido considers this. Then he asks, "And does he look like he's going to shut up and go away?"

The aide hesitates, then shakes his head. "I've done a little bit of local digging. Not much I can find out at this time of night--"

"It's barely 9:00," Shido interrupts.

"And that's late for a backwater town like this," his aide says. "But there were the usual rubberneckers who showed up when the arrest was made, and I talked to a few of them. Apparently the kid has a little bit of a reputation in town for stirring up trouble. This is the first time he's been arrested, but he's known for breaking curfew, being in places he shouldn't, things like that. There was also some kind of incident with his entire class breaking into the local high school a few months ago, and this kid may or may not have been the ringleader in that incident. The people I talked to seemed to think it was likely."

All in all, very definitely _not_ the kind of kid that would sit down and shut up about being arrested for assault when (as both he and his so-called victim know perfectly well) he had not assaulted anyone.

But people can be broken, no matter how much trouble they might think they are.

"We have strings to pull with the local police force, I assume," Shido says. "Even _here_."

The way he says _here_ is the same way his aide had said _backwater_. Clearly, neither of them think much of the small town where they're currently staying.

"Not directly," his aide says. "But the detective in charge of the kid's case owes some people favors, and some of them owe _you_ favors--I've started leaning on them already."

"Good," says his boss. "Then make sure the kid's not released until he... fully understands his situation."

His aide nods. Until he's broken, is what his boss means. Until he's too scared and shaken to even think about causing problems. "Of course," he says. "And given that he has no family, we can make sure he goes somewhere... I don't know. With some family that won't be up to dealing with a delinquent kid. He'll either be placed in the foster system or on temporary probation after he's released, and there's plenty of... underwhelming temporary guardians he could be given to."

Shido nods, accepting the plan. "He'll be an orphan, and a delinquent with a criminal history. Who would bother listening to someone like _that_?" He makes a dismissive gesture, some of the angry blotching fading from his face. 

His aide nods. This kid is unlucky, to have crossed paths the wrong person, not just once but _twice_ without really knowing what he's doing. But unlucky, unintentional, it doesn't really matter. By the time the kid crawls his way out of the pile of bad luck he's stumbled into, he'll be too much of a wreck to be any kind of threat to them.

-//-

_March 19_

_Morning_

-//-

Dojima wakes up on Sunday and comes into the kitchen, only to find his eleven year old daughter already in the kitchen, half working on making herself breakfast and half distracted with staring at the wall with an expression that says whatever she's thinking about, it's a million miles away from here.

He sighs, walks over to her, and gently steers her to a chair. "Let me do that," he says.

It's enough, apparently to snap Nanako out of her distraction. " _Dad_ ," she protests, making a face.

"I think I can manage to make one breakfast," he tells her, and goes back to the kitchen.

For several minutes there's silence. With everything that's happened over the past five days, they haven't had much chance to talk. Dojima has been busy with the spiralling nightmare that has been Akira's arrest and subsequent detention, and Nanako...

Honestly, he hasn't seen much of her in the past few days. She's been quiet, and in the house less than usual.

"Is Akira going to be okay, Dad?" Nanako asks at last.

He debates with himself for a moment. Not about what the right answer is, but about what to tell her, and how to say it. In the end, he decides on _everything_ , and _as kindly as he can_.

It's a hard truth. Kindness is needed.

"You have to understand," Dojima says carefully, as he carries a less than impressive breakfast over to her at the table. "That Akira's going to be in more trouble over this than most people would. Because of his parents."

Nanako ignores the food. "But," she says. "That's not his fault."

"No," Dojima says carefully. "But... they've been gone for a long time now. And there are laws about what's supposed to happen to minors when they're left orphaned. What Akira did--coming here, staying with us instead of going through the correct channels, that's _not_ supposed to happen."

He knows that Nanako know this already, but she needs to hear it again. She needs to understand _why_ the things that will take place over the next few weeks are going to happen.

"But he wants to be here," Nanako says. "We want him to be here too, right Dad?"

"We do," he agrees. "But--" But if they'd wanted it badly enough, maybe they should have done something about it years ago. Oh, he'd had reasons not to bring Akira to the attention of any kind of child protection service--not least because he has no illusions about how someone like Akira would handle the stifling foster care system, even temporarily.

But it's easy to kick himself now, and think that he should have done _something_.

"Are they going to let him come home?" Nanako asks, when Dojima doesn't continue.

Her question is tentative. She's only eleven, but... Dojima meets her sad eyes, and knows that eleven is old enough to have already figured out the answer. 

"No," he says, softly. "I've been... talking to a few people." Carefully. Never saying too much, never coming right out and confirming or denying that he's known for years that Akira is an orphan. Being found complicit (he tells himself) will not let him help Akira. There's even an outside chance that he could be found unfit as a guardian because of his disregard for the _correct_ way of handling Akira's circumstances.

Having Nanako taken away too will not help _any_ of them.

"What kind of people?" Nanako asks.

"He's being held in a juvenile facility in Okina," Dojima explains. "I know a few people there, so I've been asking questions." Not that he's been getting a lot of answers--he has his suspicions that the so-called victim in Akira's assault, whoever he had been, had pulled a few strings to keep his name out of the records. Dojima hasn't been able to hear even a whisper about him. "He's still being questioned. After that, he'll have to go in front of a judge, who will decide the consequences."

"Some people at school are talking about him," Nanako says.

"Oh yea," Dojima mutters. "That woman that was with whoever Akira allegedly assaulted. She works at your school, doesn't she?"

Nanako shrugs and nods at the same time. "She's been telling people that Akira hurt that guy," she says. "Which isn't _true_."

Neither of them have been able to talk to Akira since he was arrested. Dojima has tried, more than once, to get in and see him. He's been meet with an unbreakable wall of resistance and legal red tape, and because he's not Akira's guardian, he has no legalgrounds to even see him.

Still, Dojima can't help but agree with Nanako. Even without hearing Akira's version of events, even without additional witnesses, he knows that Akira wouldn't have just assaulted a stranger without provocation. The kid can be trouble--he _thrives_ on trouble. But not this kind. Not the kind that hurts people. 

"What are we going to do, Dad?" Nanako asks. "We have to do _something_ to help him."

Dojima lets out a breath between his teeth. "I don't know," he admits. "A lot of what we can do will depend on what happens when he goes in front of the judge."

"We can't just break him out of jail?" Nanako asks. 

Dojima gives her a sideways look, not _quite_ sure if she's trying to make a joke, or if Akira and his bone deep tendency for finding trouble has been rubbing off on her. "No," he says, just to cover his bases. "We can't jailbreak Akira. I don't need two kids locked up."

Nanako takes this in stride, which Dojima hopes is a sign that she actually had meant it as a joke. "Okay," she says. "Okay."

And they both go quiet again. 

The house feels empty, with only the two of them there. 

-//-

_March 18_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Akira has never been arrested before.

Well. He has never been _officially_ arrested before. There was the time last year when his entire class had been caught breaking into the high school in the middle of the night, but they'd walked away from that with relatively minor punishments.

Walking away from this mess with minor punishments is looking less and less likely the longer Akira is left to sit and stew. He's not being told anything, he's not being allowed to talk to anyone that might be on his side--no attorney or even someone from child services, no one. Minors, as far as he's aware, are not supposed to be questioned without a guardian or at least a responsible adult present, but Akira has so far been alone every time he's brought back for another round of so-called questioning--hours of being shouted at, of accusations, of the same thing over and over without a break.

He doesn't think that this is how things are supposed to work, but he also doesn't know what he's supposed to do about it--other than stay as calm as he can, to keep saying that he hadn't assaulted anyone, and to not give an inch in the face of an increasingly aggressive and lengthy interrogation.

Shouting. Accusations. An antagonism that the police detective in charge of the case isn't even trying to hide. Akira's not an idiot, and he lives with Dojima. He's been almost-arrested before. He knows that this isn't _right_ , and some part of him, deep down, is convinced that it's all going to work out. That someone is going to remember what the rules are and start playing by them.

(What a time to realize that he's an _honest_ trickster--that on some level, for some reason, he still believes in the rules he enjoys bending so much)

And gradually, painfully, he feels himself start to give. It's hard to be completely alone, to be cut off from the people he cares about, to be locked away and told nothing about what's going to happen next. It's hard not to start to crumble, and over time, Akira can feel them starting to wear him down. And he hates it, but this is not the kind of fight that he knows how to win. Alone, and with nowhere to hide, Akira has no idea how long he'll be able to keep himself from crumbling.

During questioning, Akira is able to sit there and take whatever they want to dish out. He hides himself away as if behind a mask, listens to the shouting, and sometimes even has the courage to snark back at them. But when the adrenaline of the moment is over, when the daily interrogation is done and he's been lead back to his concrete cell, that's when the shaking starts. And the fear sets in. And the nagging questions he can't shake off.

_How long is this going to last?_

_How much longer can I hold out?_

_What are they going to do to me?_

He sleeps badly, and suffers from nightmares.

Most of the time he's locked away on his own, apart for when he's been brought back out for questioning. About the assault--or what they're still calling an assault, what they talk and talk and _talk_ about, until sometimes Akira catches himself thinking of it the same way. Sometimes, it feels like they're not even trying to get him to confess, like they don't even care if he's innocent or guilty as long as _he_ thinks he is.

That's what scares him the most. More than the shouting, or the occasional bruises that police _definitely_ aren't supposed to be allowed to leave on prisoners. It's the way that their relentless repetition of _this is what happened, this is what you did, this is the kind of person you are and you should be ashamed_ wears away at him until he thinks that maybe they might be right.

Sometimes, it feels like they're just trying to break him into pieces so small he'll never be himself again. That can't be _normal_ , can it? Even if he'd done exactly what he's accused of, surely the police wouldn't usually be spending all this time on him. They'd process him, decide on a punishment, and let him out again, right?

They're not doing that.

They're waiting for... something. For Akira to give up, maybe. For him to break.

And maybe, if all they'd done was shout at _him_ , attack _him,_ then maybe Akira would have been able to outlast them. Eventually, maybe even soon enough for him to get out of this more or less okay, they would have _had_ to... to do something. Process him, prosecute him, _something_. Get him out of this no man's land of not knowing what's going to happen to him.

Maybe.

But of course, they _don't_ just stick to attacking him. And the day the detective in charge of his case brings up the Dojimas (sits there, with his not-quite-a-smile on his face, talking about how _unlikely_ it is that someone like Dojima could have had him in his house for five years without learning about his parents, how covering something like that up could have legal consequences, how his association with that family could _ruin_ them--)

That's the day that Akira hits his limit. He sits there, slumped over the table as the man in front of him talks obliquely about how much the people he cares about are going to be hurt, because of _him_. And he just... he can't...

He hits his limit.

He breaks.

And the detective... smiles.

-//-

_March 18_

_Evening_

-//-

Akira sleeps badly that night.

It's just the usual nightmares at first. Normal by now, even if they're still horrible and disturbing. Akira dreams of being trapped here for the rest of his life. He dreams of the night he'd been arrested, and of the fear on the face of the woman, and the burning anger on the face of the man. He dreams of the families he's left behind--his birth parents, dead six years now but somehow disappointed in him even in death, and then of the Dojimas, being hurt because of _him._ He dreams of Inaba being covered in fog, of Shadows on the streets, of rains of blood. He dreams of one horror after another after another, and then--

_"Trickster."_

The voice cuts through the tornado of nightmares like a sudden breath of fresh, cool air. It's clear but quiet, as if the speaker is standing right beside him, whispering into his ear.

Akira knows that voice. He hasn't heard it since he was a kid, hasn't _ever_ heard it this full of pain and fear, but still he knows it. Immediately.

Lavenza.

He tries to speak, but it turns out that this isn't that kind of dream. No sound comes out, and when Akira tries to turn his head to _see_ her, he finds himself frozen in place. This nightmare--if it really _is_ a nightmare--when she sounds so real--is dark, and impenetrable, and it almost feels like he and Lavenza are the only two real things in all of existence, right in this moment.

"Listen, Trickster," Lavenza says. "The last day we saw each other. I told you that one day we would meet again. That when that time came, you would have to be brave, and smart, and just a little bit of trouble. Do you remember?"

He does. It had been one of the last things she'd said to him before she had to leave Inaba for good. But he can't answer, can't turn and ask why she's bringing this up now, or all times, or why she's here at all.

Lavenza obviously doesn't expect him to answer, because she only pauses for a moment before going on. Her voice is a little more strained now, and a little more pain leaks through. "Things are happening," she says. "It's complicated, there's no--" A brief grunt of pain. "No _time_. But I needed to warn you that what's coming is worse than I ever thought. I can't-- _be_ there for you. And I needed to warn you that you will have to be braver, and smarter, and _so much more trouble_ than I ever imagined." 

There's a ghost of a touch against his shoulder, and then--

And then the touch is ripped away from him, and the feeling of Lavenza at his side in the darkness is gone.

And then Akira falls from his bed to the floor with a violent _thump_ , jolting himself awake.

And then there is a scream, in that same familiar voice, echoing across the gulf between his dream and reality, ringing in his ears and shaking him to the core. Arsene, long silent within him after years away from the TV World, is suddenly buzzing and eager, and Akira wants to cry out against the sudden reawakening, and the chaos of the dream.

Maybe he does. He tries to, anyway, but when he opens his mouth there's no sound at all, and the only thing he can hear is the fading echo of his friend's pain. A horrible, twisting noise as if she's being _torn in two_.

That same day, as he tries to deal with the twin horrors of Lavenza being hurt and the Dojimas being threatened, Akira is told that he'll go in front of a judge before the weekend. They're finally going to set a plan for probation or foster care or whatever's going to happen to him after he's released from the detention center.

Apparently, he thinks, he's finally been broken enough for them.

(And if he knew how true that was--if he knew that the detective in charge of his case had sent an email off to Tokyo that same morning, explaining that he wouldn't be trouble anymore, that the facility guard reports night terrors, and that a combination of threats and anger have brought him down to--in the detective's words-- _nothing_ , Akira might not even have been surprised)

(They've really done a _thorough_ job, of pulling him to pieces)

In the days that follow, Akira goes quiet. He's spent the past five years growing into his role of Trickster. He's spent that time testing his boundaries, learning how to make trouble and then how to get back out of it again. He doesn't think that makes him a bad person. He doesn't think he's ever hurt anyone. Just Shadows, and that's different.

But he's in trouble now, a whole different kind of trouble, and he's in over his head. His parents' death is finally common knowledge. The Dojimas are in real danger of getting in trouble too, just because they know him. And something--he doesn't know _what_ but he knows that it's _bad_ \--has happened to Lavenza. 

He doesn't know what to do with all that. He doesn't know how to deal with it, or even how to begin to react. He needs to _do_ something, but he's locked up and supervised all the time, he's trapped and helpless and alone.

He shuts down, a little.

He thinks--when he can make himself think about it at all--that he deserves it after everything that's happened in the past week. 

Eventually, finally, he's brought in front of a judge to hear what his sentence is going to be for the assault-that-hadn't-been-an-assault. The judge asks him if he'd like to say anything in his own defense. Akira repeats the story he's been telling since his arrest, the same story that no one so far has listened to or believed. Explains that it hadn't been an assault, that he'd just been trying to help a woman that was being dragged into a car against her will. Tells the judge that he'd tried to intervene, and the drunk man had fallen on his own and gotten hurt that way.

The judge listens patiently to Akira's story. And then when he's done, the judge declares him guilty, and sentences him to a year of probation before being released into foster care. 

He's brought back to the juvenile detention center after that, to wait for the paperwork to all be put in order, while someone finds a place for him to stay for the next year. At some point, someone explains to him the exact details of his probation.

Some of the points make sense. Of course one of the terms of his probation is that he can't get into any more trouble with the law. Sure, he's going to be expected to attend school regularly and avoid truancy.

But then there are the terms stipulating that his probation has to take place a minimum distance away from Inaba. That he's not allowed to have any contact with the Dojimas at all. He looks at the names listed there, and fights to keep what he's feeling off his face. It's not just Dojima and Nanako, but Yu too, and even Yu's parents--people Akira has never even met. They're being as through as they can possibly be in cutting him off from the people he thinks of as family.

"It's for your own good," says the bored social worker who explains all this to him. And theirs. The legal consequences of you not having a _legitimate_ guardian for five years are still being determined. I've heard some rumors that charges are going to be filed for endangerment of a minor."

Akira's mouth goes tight and thin. The only person that's ever put him in danger is himself. Dojima's only ever done his best to protect him.

So maybe, what that means is that it's time for him to protect them. 

He signs his agreement to the terms of probation.

Later that day, he learns that he's being sent to Tokyo, to a temporary guardian with an adopted daughter and a cafe, living in an out of the way neighborhood that Akira--with his limited knowledge of Tokyo's geography--has never even heard of.

And that's that.

-//-

_March 25_

_Morning_

-//-

Sojiro Sakura does not enjoy being called to meet with social services. The fact that he's been assured that this particular meeting will not be about Futaba doesn't do anything to make him feel better, because what else would they even have to talk to him about? He snorts to himself, imagining for a second that they've called him halfway across the city for some casual conversation.

Yea, right. Sure.

He's not the one that had set this meeting up, but they still keep him waiting almost forty five minutes before someone's free to see him. Absolutely typical, he tells himself as he checks his phone for the fifth or sixth time, making sure he hasn't missed any messages from Futaba. 

Today's one of her bad days, which is saying something considering that even on the _good_ ones, she won't come out of her room. But at least sometimes she'll still yell at him through the door, and she'll almost always text him something. Even if it's just a request for more computer equipment or junk food. 

But it's a bad day, which means that she hadn't said a word to him before he had to leave to get to his meeting with social services. She hasn't sent a single message. He'd had to stand outside her bedroom door for almost five minutes before he left the house, listening hard until he heard the clacking sound of her fingers on her computer keyboard, just to assure himself that she's still alive in there.

A secretary calls his name and points him toward an office on the far end of the hall. Sojiro pockets his phone and grunts a thank you that he doesn't really mean before following her pointing finger. The woman inside isn't one he's dealt with before during Futaba's convoluted adoption process, which throws him off a little. Maybe this really _isn't_ about her.

"I got a call yesterday asking me to come in," he says, without preamble. "Is this about my daughter?"

"Thank you very much for coming in," the woman says. She has a wilted, harried look to her that does not fill Sojiro with confidence in whatever she's about to talk to him about. "This isn't about your daughter, no."

"Then what's this all about?" Sojiro asks. "I have a business to attend to, and I've already lost an hour driving out here and waiting for the meeting." Rude, maybe, but being in this place puts him on guard. He's been here too many times to argue with Futaba's frankly terrible relatives, arguing custody and monetary compensation.

"Well," the woman says. "I understand that this is an unusual request, but there's a young man we're trying to place in a home during an extended probation, and your name's come up as a candidate."

"I'm not interested," Sojiro says immediately.

"I know that it's an inconvenience," the woman says. 

Sojiro snorts. He's still trying to get Futaba to open up to him, he's struggling to balance raising her and keeping the cafe afloat, and he has neither the interest or the time to take in some kid on probation. Inconvenience isn't a big enough word for how disruptive this would be.

"You're still registered as a foster guardian," the woman says. "And to be perfectly honest, there aren't a lot of qualified candidates in the city. You've already been vetted and background checked--"

"I don't have any interest in bringing some stranger into my house," Sojiro tells her.

The woman sighs, and rubs at the bridge of her nose. "I didn't want to mention this," she says reluctantly. "But there _is_ a chance that your failure to cooperate with this office could be seen as evidence that you're not responsible enough to maintain the custody agreement you already have set up."

It's honestly not a very skillful attempt at blackmail, Sojiro reflects, frowning at her. She doesn't look like she does this often. But skillful delivery or not, she does raise a good _point_.

The social services office is almost aggressively inept with its use of red tape and administrative nonsense. He's still being subjected to check-ins and assessments for his care of Futaba. And, because she's become a shut in while under his care, those assessments have not gone at all well.

He can't afford to offend social services again.

(He also can't understand, based on his poor reports as a guardian, why they'd entrust--why they'd force-- _another_ kid on him, of all people. They've made it clear that they see Futaba's trauma and her status as a shut-in as a failing on his part. It almost makes him wonder if they're trying to set this kid up for failure)

"What's he under probation for?" he asks.

The woman relaxes slightly, now that he's not flat out rejecting the idea.

"Assault," she says.

"Assault?" Sojiro repeats. "I have a _daughter_ at home--"

"If it makes a difference," she says. "His story is that he was trying to protect a woman from being violated by the man he ended up assaulting."

Well, of course he'd say something like that. Kids will say anything to get out of trouble.

"Its just for the school year," the woman says. "Then he'll be placed in foster care for the last few months before he turns eighteen." She holds up a folder that has been sitting on the top of a stack on her desk. "Everything's already filled out--you just have to sign."

And if he doesn't, it's a strike against his ability to take care of Futaba. Sojiro scowls. "I have a spare room over the cafe I run," he says. "More of a storage room, really. The kid can stay there, but I don't have room in my house."

There's no way she'll agree to that, he thinks. After all, her job is to keep kids like this apparent delinquent in safe and stable homes. It might be an easier way out of this than trying to convince her he doesn't _want_ this responsibility.

"That's perfectly acceptable," she says.

What.

Sojiro's gaze suddenly sharpens. He'd had the thought earlier that maybe social services is actually trying to set up a situation where he'll be sure to fail, and have Futaba taken away from him. Based on her complete lack of reaction to this new kid spending the year in a dusty storage room, he's wondering if maybe it's the _kid_ they want to see fail. After all, they haven't made any secret what they think of his parenting skills with Futaba, and keeping some teenager in a storage room over a cafe is--well, he's going to have to do it, but even he can see it's not ideal.

He tries to rally. "I don't have--"

"It's settled, then," she says, opening the folder and sliding it across the table to him. "And I'll make a mark of your cooperation on your daughter's permanent record in case we have to send someone around for another inspection."

Sojiro gives up, and signs his name. After all, it's only for the year, and he'll be in the cafe the whole time. He'll never even have to see Futaba. This isn't going to make her any _worse_.

They'll get through this. Somehow.

Which doesn't mean he has to be happy about it.

-//-

_March 26_

_Morning_

-//-

Very early in the morning, on what would have been his last day of his first year of high school, Akira is finally released.

It's been just under two weeks.

It feels like so much longer.

He's been released with the clothes he'd been wearing when he was arrested, the school bag he'd had with him, and some paperwork relating to the year of probation he's about to start on. The address in Tokyo where he'll be staying during his year of probation. A train ticket to get him there. A brief introduction to the high school that had (begrudgingly, apparently) agreed to take him for the next year.

Nothing else.

Akira sits on a bench at Okina station, trying to convince himself that this isn't as bad as it feels.

There's Arsene, for one thing. Ever since that dream with Lavenza, he's been present just under the surface of Akira's conscious mind, in a way he hasn't been since Akira was twelve years old. His trips into the TV World these days are sporadic, at best--the TV at Yusuke's home that's linked to the TV World had broken and been thrown out a few months ago, Lavenza's been gone for years, and Akira has gradually let real world interests start to take up more of his time. Gardening with Nanako. Studying and schoolwork. He'd even joined the school's baseball team, after months of Daiki nagging at him.

His Persona is always present within him, but... quieter, after years of less and less frequent trips into the TV World.

The buzzing immediacy of Arsene in his head now is a vicious comfort, distracting him from _everything else in the world_. And that immediacy has to mean that this is it, right? That Lavenza's vague predictions that one day he'd see her again are finally about to come true. And that--that has to be good, right? He's been impatiently waiting for this for _years_ , now.

Except he never thought it would come after he's been arrested, while he's being sent away from home, cut off from his family, and forced back into being _alone_. And Lavenza...

He can still hear her screaming when he closes his eyes. That hadn't been just fear, or even pain. It had been something deeper, something fundamentally wrong, and Akira doesn't think... he doesn't think, after hearing that scream, that she'll be in any position to help him this year. He thinks that maybe, he's the one that's going to have to help her.

(Or, more terrifyingly, that he's already too late to help)

He drops his head into his hands and groans. So much for trying to make himself feel better.

The first morning train from Okina to Inaba slides into the station, and Akira lifts his head to watch it forlornly. He's taken that train before, a couple of times. Once coming back from a school trip. Once with Yusuke when they'd traveled from Tokyo to Inaba together to rescue Nanako from the TV World. A couple times after very thoroughly breaking curfew to find new ways of getting into trouble in Okina.

Today, he ignores the train. A couple of other people waiting on the platform get on, and then the doors slide shut, and the train rockets off.

Akira watches it until it's out of sight, and then stands.

He's been told, more than once, that the best thing he can do for the Dojimas is to cut contact with them. It's right there in his probation conditions, and the _last_ thing Akira wants is to break that and get them into more trouble. He... he hates it, but he understands. He doesn't intend to try and get in contact. It would be stupid and dangerous and Akira has recently learned in a sudden and shocking way that there are some kinds of trouble that even he can't wiggle his way out of and some kind of trouble that he won't willingly bring down on the people he cares about. He'll break ties with Dojima. With Nanako. With Yu too, probably. After all, he's part of that family, he'd known all along that Akira was an orphan...

He can't let this ruin their lives, the way it's ruining his.

But he has to call. Just once. Just to say goodbye.

His phone, a gift from Dojima which had been presented to him after his middle school graduation with a gruff _this is for you, and if you're going to keep breaking curfew and getting into things you shouldn't, do not turn the tracking off_ , is gone. It had been in Akira's schoolbag when he was arrested, and gone when he got it back. No big surprise there. They're not exactly going to tell him he can't be in contact with the Dojimas anymore, and then turn around and give him back the phone that Dojima is still paying for.

But there's a pay phone on the platform, Akira has some money in his bag, and he knows the home number off by heart. He pays for the call, dials, and waits. He's not sure whether he's hoping for Dojima to pick up or Nanako. Maybe he's hoping neither of them will. A voicemail might be easier than a conversation.

But Dojima answers on the third ring with a tired hello, and despite everything, something hard and tense in Akira uncurls a little bit.

"It's Akira," he says, and hates how quiet his voice sounds.

"Akira!" The tiredness vanishes at once. "Are you alright?"

No.

"I'm fine," Akira lies. "I was released this morning, but..."

"But you're not coming home," Dojima says, finishing the thought for him.

Akira squeezes his eyes closed and nods, before remembering (feeling stupid) that this is a phone, and Dojima can't see him. "It's a condition of probation," he says. "I'm not supposed to have any contact."

"And so of course the first thing you did was call," Dojima says dryly.

"Well," Akira says. "I... yea. I couldn't just--not say goodbye."

Dojima sighs. "That's an unreasonable term to put on a first time offender," he says. "Especially a minor."

Akira shrugs. "But they did," he says. 

"No," Dojima says. "I understand that they wouldn't let you come back. I don't have official guardianship of you. We always knew that if anyone found out, you'd be placed somewhere else. But there's no reason other than cruelty to ban contact."

"I guess," Akira says. "I don't know, but I... they're saying you could be in a lot of trouble if it turns out you knew about my parents the whole time. And I mean... you _did_ , so..." He takes a deep breath. "Look. They're pretty much saying that if I stay in contact with you, they're going to accuse you of hiding what you knew. You could get in a lot of trouble for that, right?"

Dojima's answer is too slow in coming to be anything but tacit agreement. "Akira," he says at last. "I--"

Akira cuts him off. "No," he says. "I've put you through a lot of trouble, and this is just--it's too much."

Dojima is quiet again. It goes on for so long this time, that Akira has to feed another couple of coins into the payphone. 

Finally, Dojima says, "How long is your probation?"

"A year," Akira says. "It ends next March."

"And after that," Dojima says. "The terms of your probation are irrelevant. Alright?"

"But you'll still be in trouble if--"

"Don't worry about that," Dojima says. "I have a year to figure out how much trouble this can actually cause for me."

Akira bites his lip, and doesn't say anything.

"If this is what we have to do for a year," Dojima says. "Then this is what we have to do. But we will be here, Akira. After the year is over-- _before_ the year is over, if it comes to that--we will be here. Okay?"

Akira doesn't say anything. He doesn't know what anyone can actually do to make this okay. He doesn't know if it's ever actually going to be okay for him to be part of the Dojimas' lives again, or if the threat of legal trouble is going to stretch over that for the rest of their lives. 

"Akira," Dojima says, tone a little more stern, clearly expecting an answer.

An automated voice comes over the station PA, announcing that the train to Tokyo is about to arrive.

"I have to go," Akira says. "But..." For a second, he grips the phone so tightly it hurts. "Thank you. For everything."

And then he hangs up, and runs for the train.

-//-

_March 26_

_Early Morning_

Akira has not even reached the train yet when Dojima--miles away back in Inaba--shakes his head and makes a new phone call. There are two people he needs, urgently, to talk to after that conversation.

The first is a lawyer, who Dojima has spoken to him twice since Akira was arrested. He specializes, not in criminal law as might be expected, but in family and guardianship cases.

Dojima's been on the fence about actually hiring the man. After speaking to Akira and hearing what he's been told in the two weeks since his arrest, after listening to the absolute defeat in the voice of a kid he's always thought was too _stubborn_ to give up, Dojima knows he's going to need some help with this.

The second call, after a meeting with the lawyer (a professional sounding man who is blunt in his pessimistic assessment of the difficulty of this case, and the amount of time it will take to make any progress), is to Yu.

Tokyo.

The announcement just before Akira hung up the phone had been for a train heading to Tokyo. Akira's phone has already been returned to Dojima, which means he doesn't have any direct way to get in contact with him anymore.

What he does have, however, is a nephew living in the same city that Akira is being sent away to.

-//-

_March 26_

_Morning_

-//-

Yu is headed out the door with his bag slung over his shoulder and a piece of toast in his mouth--late, he is _definitely_ late and going to miss the train--when his phone buzzes, and his uncle's name flashes up on the caller ID.

He swallows the bite of toast, and answers. "I haven't heard from anyone in a couple weeks," he says, once the hellos are out of the way. "Everything okay in Inaba?"

"No," Dojima says, and for a second Yu has flashbacks of fog and Shadows and TVs before his uncle says, "Akira's been arrested."

" _Arrested_?" Yu repeats, fully unable to keep the surprise out of his voice. "What happened? I never thought--well, I never thought he'd get _caught_ doing anything wrong."

Although he has to admit, when things _do_ go wrong for Akira, they have a tendency to go extremely wrong. He doesn't have to look any further than the year they'd spent together in Inaba, when Yu's treatment of what he thought was an evil Trickster had made Akira absolutely miserable.

"I still haven't been able to get the full story," Dojima tells him. "Akira's only just been released this morning, and I couldn't speak to him. The alleged victim is being kept anonymous, and the only other witness has been keeping quiet, except to spread some unfortunate rumors. I don't have any access to Akira's file, since I don't have any legal guardianship claim on him. And anyone that might have been willing to look the other way for me is a lot less willing now that his parents' situation has come out."

"Of course it has," Yu says, heart sinking. Poor Akira.

"It wasn't going to stay hidden for long during the investigation," his uncle says. "The first thing they would have had to do was contact his parents. Or--well, try to contact them, in this case."

"Are you going to get into any trouble for it?" Yu asks. "For knowing about it?"

"It's possible," Dojima says. "I wouldn't tell Akira this, but I have been called in a couple times at work to talk about it. There are consequences to not reporting something like this." He hesitates, then says, "One of the reasons I wanted to call you was to warn you about that. If there _is_ any trouble over this, it'll probably be mostly on me. But you knew about them too, and you're an adult now. There's a chance that you could face some consequences too, if anyone found out."

"Thanks for the warning," Yu says.

"And someone probably _will_ be in contact with you shortly," Dojima says. "I just found out hat one of the terms of Akira's probation is that he's not allowed to be in contact with this family. I'm not sure if that includes you, but I'm assuming for the moment it does. Someone will probably reach out to inform you that any attempt by you to get in contact with Akira can still be seen as him breaking the terms of his probation."

"That's--it's not fair," Yu says. "It doesn't make any sense."

"No," his uncle agrees. "It's not, and it doesn't."

"What's the other reason you wanted to call me?" Yu asks, after a brief silence. "You said one of them was to warn me, what was the other one?"

Dojima snorts. "Akira was released from custody this morning," he says. "And of course the first thing he did was break the terms of his probation and call me."

Yu smiles, very slightly. Of course. "How was he?" he asks.

"Bad," Dojima says. "Made it pretty clear that he didn't intend to get any of us into trouble by breaking the terms of his probation and staying in contact."

Yu listens, frowning now. "But cutting himself off from everyone is..."

"Not what any of us want," Dojima says. "And obviously I don't want Akira to get into any more trouble than he already has. But..." He hesitates. "He called me from what sounded like a train station. I heard an announcement in the background, right before he hung up, that the train to Tokyo was about to come in."

"Oh," Yu says. "He's coming _here_?"

"I think so," Dojima says. "And I'm not asking you to do anything you're not comfortable with, or anything that he could cause problems for him, but--well. He's there. You're there already." He sounds slightly uncomfortable and distinctly apologetic now. "I know Tokyo's a big place, but he needs _someone_ to keep an eye out for him, and..." He sighs. "Well, you both spent a year sneaking around behind my back pretty effectively while you were sneaking into another plane of existence. If anyone can make sure Akira knows he's not alone..."

"It might take some time to find him," Yu says. "Like you said, Tokyo's a big place." He considers, thinking about it. "But he might try to get in contact with Yusuke, and I know where he lives." Yusuke's sensei is fairly well known, and not at all hard to track down. Yu's third year in high school, after coming back to Tokyo, his class had actually done a unit on contemporary Japanese artists. Yusuke's sensei had featured prominently in the curriculum, while Yu sat in the back of class and tried not to look too openly skeptical as his teacher gushed about him.He shakes himself out of that memory and continues. "And Naoto's doing some work with the Tokyo police now. I can see if she might know anyone that can track him down." He nods, mostly to himself. "And I'll definitely do what I can to keep stay in touch with Akira. I'm sure there's no one watching him all the time. As long as no one reports him for talking to me--well, no one will ever know, right?"

"Hopefully," his uncle says. "Just make sure you're both careful."

"I'll make sure," Yu agrees. "And I'll let you know what I find out."

They say goodbye and Yu hangs up, staring at his phone for a second. Then he keeps walking, more slowly now, lost in thought.

It seems like Akira might have finally gotten himself into more trouble than he can handle, and all Yu wants to do is make sure he doesn't have to go through that alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HERE WE ARE, DESTROYING AKIRA'S LIFE AND CUTTING HIM OFF FROM EVERYONE HE LOVES.
> 
> HAHAHAHAHA this is fine. O.o
> 
> Edit 1/11/21: There was originally a note here saying that this fic would not touch on any Royal content. Then I actually finished Royal and, uh...
> 
> There will now be Royal content starting... around chapter 27?


	2. March 26 - April 9

_March 26_

_Evening_

-//-

Akira steps off the train and--just for a second--feels off balance and out of synch here. Sure, he's been to Tokyo before. His best friend lives here, which means there have been occasional visits, and also one time he danced on stage at a concert with some idols.

 _That_ seems like it was at least a lifetime ago.

So yes, he's visited Tokyo, once or twice. And then, every time, he's been able to go back home to Inaba.

But this time is different, because there is no going back to Inaba, and for the next year at least, Tokyo is going to have to fill in for home.

Akira doesn't have a phone, which means he doesn't have access to GPS or a map. He has a printout with directions to the home of his new temporary guardian (technically speaking, the _first_ official guardian he's had since his parents died six years ago), and he's read it six or seven times on the way into the city, until he has the list memorized. 

He's here now. Next step is to get to Shibuya Station, and take the train from there. It's not a long walk, and Akira joins the crowd of people hurrying across the Crossing. It's packed, and Akira feels like the only one there that doesn't already know exactly where he's going and what he's supposed to be doing there. He does his best. Puts on as confident of an expression as he can manage, folds up the paper with his directions and puts it in his pocket (so he'll at least look a _little_ less like a tourist), and angles his face so he won't have to accidentally look anyone in the eye. 

There might just be more people in this one crossing than there are in all of Inaba, Akira thinks hopelessly, and feels way too small to figure out how to deal with any of this. What is he supposed to do in Tokyo by himself for an entire _year_?

The moment passes--he shakes it off--and Akira slips through a gap in the crowd and onto the sidewalk just before the light changes, and the crossing behind him fills with the sound of traffic picking up again. The train station is in sight, to his relief, and after only a few minutes of wandering around and squinting at signs, Akira manages to find the line that will take him to the Yongen-Jaya neighborhood.

The atmosphere, when he gets there, is different from... pretty much every other part of Tokyo Akira's seen so far. It's not... _quiet_ , exactly. Akira can still hear the vague rattle of the train as he come up the stairs from the station below ground, and the alleys threading through the neighborhood are full of people moving, or just standing around and talking. One old man in a narrow side yard sits near a radio with his eyes closed, nodding along to the news program he's listening to.

But the neighborhood doesn't have any of the careful smoothness of the downtown areas of Tokyo. It's a little bit slower. A little bit easier to breathe in. It's older, and run down in a way that makes it seem _lived in_ rather than _decrepit_. Homey, Akira thinks, and then immediately feels guilty for the thought. This isn't home, even if it does feel a lot closer to the idea than he'd expected anywhere in Tokyo could. 

Akira slows down a little as he walks through the small neighborhood, taking it all in. He finds a house with the same address as the paperwork he's been given, with the name _Sakura_ on the doorplate. No one answers the bell, though, and since Akira's been told that Sojiro Sakura owns and works at a coffee shop in the neighborhood, he goes looking for that. He doesn't think it's so late in the day that a cafe would have already closed, and--sure enough--Akira finds Cafe Leblanc only a couple minutes' walk away. He hesitates for a second at the door, not entirely sure how to do this, then summons his courage and goes inside.

His eyes, hidden behind his glasses, sweep across the cafe and the people in it. An older couple sit together at one of the booths, and a pretentious looking young man nurses a cup of coffee at the bar. On the other side of the counter, a man about the same age as Dojima returns Akira's appraising look with one of his own.

"Hi," Akira says, trying his absolute best not to fidget or sound nervous. "Are you Sojiro Sakura?"

The man nods. "You'd be that kid social services told me about," he says, half making a face and turning away. He seems resigned, and completely unenthusiastic about having Akira staying with him. 

The shop's three patrons are all looking at them with various levels of interest, and Akira feels kind of awkward about having this conversation in front of an audience. Apparently Sakura seems to have the same reluctance, because he waves Akira into one of the empty booths. "I'll be with you in a minute," he says, but in fact it's closer to half an hour before the last of the customers have cleared out, and Sakura emerges from behind the bar for a conversation. Akira spends that half hour taking in his surroundings, trying not to fidget, and wishing he had his phone with him just so he'd have something to do with his hands. 

"I heard a little bit about your case," Sakura says, without preamble. "You assaulted someone with enough connections to get you sent away on probation. You don't have any family--although for some reason you've been pretending you do--so social serves got involved, and put you in my charge for the year."

"I didn't assault anyone," Akira says. He's said it so many times to the police that he can't even make the words sound convincing anymore. "He was trying to assault someone. I stepped in, he was drunk and mad and fell flat on his face." And he does have a family. Just... not one he's related to by blood, and not one he'll ever get to see again, probably.

Sakura studies him, raising his eyebrows. "Well then," he says. "Either that story's a creative lie, or you have some incredibly bad luck." He doesn't sound particularly interested in hearing which option is correct.

"The second one," Akira tells him anyway.

Sakura shakes his head, and Akira gets the message loud and clear. This is an adult that doesn't want to hear what he's saying. This isn't someone that wants to get involved. "Whatever really happened," the man goes on. "You're here now, and I'm sure you've been told how important it is for you to behave yourself."

"Yea," Akira says. "If I mess up on the terms of my probation, I get sent back to juvenile detention." If he's lucky. He wouldn't be surprised if they manage to come up with something worse, if he puts a toe out of line again.

"So at least you understand that much," Sakura says. 

Akira can _feel_ his face settling into a stubborn expression. The police hadn't believed--or hadn't wanted to believe--that Akira hadn't done anything wrong. But he's going to be living here (as long as he doesn't mess up) until his probation is up. He has to at least try to stand up for his own innocence, doesn't he? 

He opens his mouth, but Sakura sighs and puts a hand up to stop him before he can get a word out. "Listen, kid," he says. "Whatever you did, or whatever youdidn't do, it doesn't matter. It's in the past, the court's decided on a punishment for you, and you can't change any of what's already happened. What matters is that you're here now, and as long as you keep your head down and your nose clean for the next year, you'll make it through your probation without getting into any more trouble."

This is the person Akira is going to be living with for the next year. He's the person that's going to be making reports to social services and his probation officer, and probably the _worst_ possible person to start pissing off on day one. So as much as he wants to keep arguing (it _does_ matter that he hadn't assaulted anyone, and he's _itching_ to protest his innocence), Akira just closes his mouth and gives a jerky nod. He hates it. But what's he supposed to do?

"That's the way the world works, kid," Sakura tells him, then waves a hand at Akira to follow him upstairs. "It's not fair, and no one's going to reward you for doing the right thing."

Up a flight of creaking stairs is a storage room, half filled with boxes and covered with a healthy layer of dust. There's a mattress set up on a row of crates under the window, and Akira eyes it in surprise. "I'm sleeping up here?" he asks.

"I know it could use some cleaning," Sakura says. "But this is the only space I have."

His _take it or leave it_ is left unsaid but clearly communicated. Akira had not been thinking much about the mess at all--it's just dust, and the room is _big_. He's pretty sure he could have fit his _and_ Nanako's rooms back home inside this one, and still had space left over.

"There's--a lot of space up here," he says quietly.

Sakura makes a slightly uncomfortable motion, and changes the subject. "I can bring up some cleaning supplies," he tells Akira. "And a lot of these boxes are pretty much junk--I can get them out of here in the next couple of weeks. But anything else you want to do up here is on you."

"Sure," Akira says. He doesn't exactly love cleaning (who does?) but he likes it better than the idea of sleeping with this much dust and dirt floating around. And it'll give him something to do, other than stewing about things. "No problem."

"And if you let me know when your stuff's coming," Sakura continues. "I can keep an eye out for it."

Right. His stuff. "I don't think anything's coming," Akira says. "I, uh..." He's not completely sure that no one would have been sent to the Dojimas to collect his things, but it doesn't feel like something they'd have thought to do. This whole setup has the air of being thrown together at the last minute, and with a general lack of forethought. "One of the terms of my probation is that I'm not allowed to be in contact with m--with the family I've been staying with. And I don't think anyone would have told them where I'm coming, so..." He shrugs, indicating the bag on his shoulder. "This is about it." His Yasogami uniform, a couple of school books, a few Shadow hunting odds and ends he never bothers clearing out--his daggers had been confiscated and _not_ returned--and about ¥5,000, mostly from sporadic TV World trips.

"Geeze, kid," Sakura says, running a hand across his face. His tone is getting uncomfortably close to pity, and Akira bristles a little. He doesn't want to be pitied. He doesn't like the feeling.

"It's fine," he lies. And then, before the conversation can go any farther down this fairly uncomfortable road, he adds, "And my name's Akira." Not _kid_.

"Sorry," Sakura says, and although the word is still gruff, it's a little bit _less_ gruff than his earlier tone. Maybe he's looking at the dust covered attic Akira's going to be staying in, and feeling a little bit guilty. Maybe he's just not that bad of a guy. 

(Probably that's just wishful thinking)

"I guess we haven't really done the introduction thing yet," Sakura goes on. "You're going to be staying here for the year, you can go ahead and call me Sojiro."

Introductions officially made, the conversation turns to practicalities. Sojiro tells him he'll feed him, but that he's not to touch the refrigerator since that's where the food for the cafe is. There's no shower in the building, but there's a bathhouse across the street.

He is not, under any circumstance, to go into the Sakura house.

Akira has been looking around, and listening, and putting things together, so when Sojiro says--in pointed, _listen to this_ tones--he asks, "Is it because that's where your daughter is?"

"They told you about her, I guess," Sojiro says. He sounds like he'd rather not have Akira know about her at all, which on the one hand kind of makes sense. There's an assault on his record, and Sojiro would be a pretty bad guardian if he wasn't thinking about how to keep her safe from exactly that kind of person.

On the other hand, he's not used to people being scared of him like that. He doesn't like the way it feels.

"Yea," Akira says, trying to sound casual. "I mean, they didn't tell me a lot. Just mentioned that you were already with the foster system because you'd adopted a daughter a little while ago."

Sojiro chews on that for a minute, then says, "Her name's Futaba. She came to stay with me after her mother died, and it turned out that her surviving relatives weren't responsible enough to take care of a cat, much less a human being. She's been a shut in since she came to stay with me, and you're not going to meet her."

The _or else_ goes unsaid, but Akira hears it loud and clear anyway.

"Got it," Akira says. He stares hard at the window on the opposite side of the room so that he won't have to look at Sojiro when he says, "I guess you don't have to believe me that I _didn't_ assault anyone, but I swear I'm not going to hurt Futaba." Or anyone else, but since that's apparently too much to convince people of right now, he doesn't try to push it at the moment.

"Good," Sojiro says, and makes a point of changing the subject again. He wraps up the conversation, and after only a couple more minutes goes back down to mind the cafe.

Akira, left alone in the dusty storage room, takes a long look around him. 

Then he starts cleaning, because what else does he have to do?

-//-

_March 26_

_Evening_

-//-

Futaba is out of her room and on the living room couch when Sojiro gets home that night, arms wrapped around her legs as she hugs them close to her chest, face pressed in against her knees. She only lifts her head up when she hears the door open, and Sojiro call out that he's home.

"Oh," he says, sounding pleased. Probably because he's not used to being greeted by Futaba in person, rather than a shout from the other side of a locked door. "You're out here."

"What's he like?" Futaba asks immediately.

A brief pause, and then Sojiro moves past her into the cluttered kitchen. Leblanc might only do coffee and curry, but there are plenty of other things Sojiro likes to make when it's just the two of them at home. His kitchen clutter sometimes gets almost as bed as Futaba's general bedroom mess--that's _his_ safe space. "What's who like?" he asks, with absolutely unconvincing nonchalance.

Futaba scoffs, unfolding herself a little. "The guy that's staying at Leblanc!" she says. "What's he _like_ , Sojiro?"

Sojiro gives her an appraising look across the room, and Futaba can imagine what he's seeing, the way he's looking at her--too pale from being shut up inside all the time, eyes wide behind glasses that take up half her face, hair and clothes a little disheveled because it's not like anyone else is ever going to see her.

"He's fine," Sojiro says, and does not elaborate at all, even when Futaba groans and complains and continues to ask questions. This guy, whoever he is, is going to be living at Leblanc for an entire _year_. If he's dangerous or crazy or going to break into the house in the middle of the night, doesn't she have a right to know?

"What's his name?" she asks over dinner, after Sojiro has evaded every other question she's asked about him.

He chews the question over, then apparently decides that this isn't too much information to give out. "Akira Kurusu," he says, then, "Hey, Futaba--!"

She's already abandoned dinner and run back into her room, slamming the door behind her. What kind of hacker would she be, if she couldn't figure out what kind of guy this was from his name?

Sojiro calls her name a couple more times, voice muffled by the closed bedroom door, but doesn't try to come in. Futaba spares just a second to appreciate that--none of the relatives she'd been sent to after the funeral cared at all if she needed her space, but Sojiro always has--then wakes up her computer and starts running searches.

An hour later, she knows everything there is to know about Akira Kurusu, or at least everything available over the internet. She has his arrest record, his family history, and five consecutive approved applications to some kind of school exchange program in some rural town Futaba's never heard of. There's also a four year old video of him dancing in some idol concert, which Futaba watches with _extreme_ confusion, and which makes it significantly more difficult to be nervous about him.

Sure, maybe it's possible for someone to be that awkward of a dancer and also a violent person that assaults random strangers on the sheet, but as Futaba restarts the concert video and squints at it suspiciously a second time, she's having a _really_ hard time making that mental connection.

Still, the weird dancing video is four years old, and people can change, and Futaba's curiosity isn't completely satisfied yet. She shuffles in her computer chair, thinking, then looks back through his arrest record for a phone number. There's one there, but when Futaba goes poking into a few online databases, she finds that it's been recently disconnected. Maybe he has a new number, for some reason?

She ventures back out of her room (for the second time in one day, win) to poke through Sojiro's phone while he's distracted in the other room. His contact list doesn't show any Akira, though, which is unhelpful and frustrating. When Futaba lingers near the kitchen _way_ past when she's stopped feeling comfortable, and asks a few sort-of-subtle-but-probably-not-as-subtle-as-she's-aiming-for questions, Sojiro tells her that Akira _does not have a phone_.

"How does he not have a phone?" Futaba demands. "Everyone has a phone. Even _you_ have a phone."

He raises his eyebrows, but doesn't comment on this last part. "I didn't ask him for a lot of details," he says. "He's here because there's a chance _you_ might have been taken away if I turned him down. That's it."

"Yea," Futaba says. "Sure, but since he's here, don't you at least want to know..." She shrugs pointedly, but he just shakes his head. 

"Just don't get too curious about him," Sojiro tells her. "He'll be gone in a year."

But Futaba has always been the kind of person that wants to know everything. Especially now, when making herself go outside is almost impossible, and hacking is the only way she really has of knowing what's going on in the world around her. She's even thought about bugging Leblanc before, just to feel like she's that little bit more connected to the world outside her bedroom door--

The solution smacks her in the face then. She _has_ thought about bugging Leblanc, but there's never been a good enough reason to overcome her extreme reluctance to go outside. It's not really an errand she can ask Sojiro to run for her, after all.

But it's just up the street, right? It's just a quick walk there, a few bugs, and a quick walk back. And then she'll be able to figure out what Akira's like, and she'll never have to wonder what's going on in Leblanc while she's shut up in her room. Two birds, one stone. It's perfect.

Right. Totally perfect. She can go tonight, after Sojiro's asleep.

-//-

_March 26_

_Midnight_

-//-

Futaba stands in the darkness just inside the front door, breathing quietly into the silence, staring at the doorknob like she can make it turn by itself if she just tries hard enough. 

It's dark out. It's just after midnight, and the streets in Yongen-Jaya will be pretty much empty. The cafe is a five minute walk away. Two minutes if she goes fast.

But...

But leaving home is hard. Leaving her _room_ is hard, and even if this has been a relatively good day (Futaba has left her room more in the past twenty four hours than she does during most entire _weeks_ ), she doesn't think she can force herself to actually go outside. It's--it's just... it's too much.

Futaba turns away from the door, shoulders slumping as she gives up for the night. Maybe she can do it in another couple of days. After she's worked up some courage.

She seals herself back up in her room, and doesn't quite relax even after she locks the door behind her, and hears the usually reassuring _click_ of the bolt sliding into place.

-//-

_March 27_

_Morning_

-//-

Yu waits until Sunday before going to find Yusuke.

He'd spoken to Naoto on Saturday, meeting up with her at a cafe to tell her what had happened to Akira, and to ask her help with finding him. She'd been appropriately horrified to hear what had happened, and promised to let him know immediately if she could turn up anything about where in Tokyo he's been sent.

She had also, however, warned him that it would take time. She could talk to people, and ask questions, and make her deductions, but none of that would tell them immediately where Akira is--she's only just been cleared to work with the Tokyo police department as a detective consultant, and that means she doesn't have all that many contacts or favors to call on. She'd apologized, but Yu had told her not to worry about it. That of course she'll do her best, and that means that of course she'll find Akira eventually.

But of course _eventually_ is the problem. There's no telling how much trouble Akira can get into while he's all on his own in Tokyo, and the longer it takes to find him, the bigger the chance he'll find himself mixed up in something too big to get out of on his own.

Yu's not really okay with that. He's known Akira since he was sixteen and Akira was eleven, and in every way that counts, they're family.

Well. Every way that counts except for legally. It would have been nice if the _courts_ recognized them as family, but it's a little late to do anything about it now.

It used to be easy to take care of Akira, or at least as easy as it possibly could be with a Trickster who lives up to his name. Back when they were living in Inaba, it used to be easy to comfort Akira when bad luck and general trouble had him trying not to cry in their shared bedroom. It used to be easy to keep him away from fights that were too big for him just by keeping him away from the front lines.

Now?

Now, he needs to find Akira, and while Naoto will _definitely_ get to him eventually, there's no point in ignoring other options that are less certain but possibly quicker. Akira's been banned from talking to any of them--Yu had gotten formal notice in the mail that morning that any contact between Akira and himself would result in Akira violating the terms of his probation--but Yusuke isn't family. He's not family, but he's Akira's best friend and he's right here in the city. Yu's willing to bet that he's either reached out to Yusuke already, or he will soon.

Yu goes to Shibuya early on Sunday, making the short walk from the train station to the rundown building where Madarame (and, more importantly, Yusuke) live. It's summer break, and Sunday on top of that, which means there's a better chance of Yusuke being at home. Yu's not sure what he's going to say if Madarame answers, but he gets lucky--when he goes up and rings the doorbell, it's Yusuke that opens the door.

"Good morning," Yu says, trying and not quite managing to smile.

Yusuke blinks at him in surprise. It's been a few years since they've seen each other, and for a second as Yusuke looks at him blankly, Yu's not sure the teenager actually recognizes him. _Yusuke's_ definitely grown up--he's tall and lanky in a just-hit-a-growth-spurt way, and he's either died his hair a dark shade of blue, or somehow smeared paint through it.

Then Yusuke nods at him. "Yu," he says. "I don't mean to be rude, but--what are you doing here?"

"It's kind of a long story," Yu admits. "Do you mind if I...?" He gestures toward the door, but Yusuke shakes his head.

"Sorry," he says. "Sensei's home this morning, and he--well, you know what a bad influence he thinks Akira is." Yusuke comes outside instead, a couple steps away from the door. "I don't think he'd be happy to see you, either."

"I can't say I'm really surprised," Yu admits. "Actually that's... sort of what I wanted to talk to you about."

"Sensei?" Yusuke asks.

"No," Yu says. "About Akira. He's in trouble again."

Yusuke nods like this is neither surprising nor particularly worrying. 

"Bad trouble," Yu elaborates, and gives Yusuke the condensed version of what Dojima had told him yesterday. "I was hoping Akira had tried to meet with you," he says, when he's finished.

Yusuke looks considerably less unsurprised and unworried now. "I didn't hear anything about this," he says. "I haven't spoken to Akira in about a week. I suppose that was because--it would have been when he was arrested."

Yu nods. "That sounds like about the right timing," he says. "And I know he doesn't have his cell anymore--he had to call my uncle from a public phone."

"So he would have had to come here," Yusuke says. "And with Sensei here, I think he'd know better than..." He hesitates, then corrects himself. "I think he would be very careful about coming here and not risk it in the middle of the day."

Yu nods, pushing down on his disappointment. He'd been hoping that Akira might have called Yusuke immediately, but he'd known from the beginning that it was a long shot. "If he does talk to you," he says. "Can you let me know?"

Yusuke nods, and they trade numbers before parting. Yu heads down the street as Yusuke goes back inside. He's done what he can here--all he can do now is wait for either Naoto to find Akira or Yusuke to get word from him.

-//-

_March 27_

_Morning_

-//-

Yusuke is lost in thought when he goes back into the Atelier, but a sound from down the hall startles him out of it. It's just him and Sensei here now, since Natsuhiko left, which means there's only one person that could be standing there.

Yusuke shoots an apologetic look at his sensei, trying to look innocent and probably failing. Had his sensei heard any of that? It's hard to tell from his expression.

"Yusuke, my boy," his sensei says. There's something about his smile that makes Yusuke's heart sink. He knows. He's heard, if not all of it than at least enough to put the pieces together. "I've been thinking that you're getting old enough to assist more actively with my exhibits."

Yusuke considers this from behind an expression that's as impassive as he can possibly make it, given the circumstances. He's suspected for years that his sensei is plagiarizing his students' artwork and claiming it as his own, but so far Yusuke hasn't been asked to give up any of his own art. Is that what this is about? At least it would be better than his sensei finding out about Akira being in Tokyo, and in trouble...

"Yes," his sensei continues, and behind the light tone (I'm giving you a _gift_ , his voice says, something to be _grateful_ for). "Your art really has been coming along remarkably well over the past few years. Between your instructors at Kosei, and of course my own guidance..."

He's almost preening, and Yusuke bites his lip to stop himself from rolling his eyes. Goemon has been more... alert, lately. His Persona is always with him, of course, but in the last few days it's felt like he's been just under the surface of Yusuke's mind, almost ready to burst free. It's put Yusuke a little bit more on edge, made him see things a little bit more clearly.

Right now, what he's noticing is his sensei at his absolute worst, and with the news about Akira, Yusuke is not in the mood for giving his sensei the benefit of the doubt. He's undoubtedly a master artist, even if he is _also_ a plagiarist (Yusuke doesn't really believe he's stolen every painting he's ever made, and anyway there had been some from before he was famous, before he had students--the Sayuri alone is enough to earn his reputation). But right now, with _that_ look on his face, Yusuke has a feeling he's dealing with the plagiarist and not with the artist.

His sensei is still talking, and Yusuke forces himself to pay attention as the little speech wraps up. "...think that you're more than ready for one of your paintings to be hung at the exhibit in May," his sensei is saying. "We'll put it under my name, of course."

"Of course," Yusuke says, somehow managing to keep a straight face.

"Far less risk to you that way," his sensei says, in a convincingly kind tone. "You're still young, my boy. If your first piece of publicly displayed art is poorly received by the critics, it could be severely damaging to your reputation. I'm well established enough to be able to weather a few nasty opinions."

Yusuke nods. So it _is_ plagiarism. Just like that, half a decade of wondering is answered, right from his sensei's own mouth.

"I..." And here he hesitates, because he doesn't want his work taken, and hung up in a gallery under somebody else's name. He knows that he is more than his art, he knows that he can survive being hurt in this way, but he also knows that _he does not want this_.

It's wrong. It's _wrong_ to take people's art from them.

But Akira is in trouble, and right now that's much more important. If this appeases his sensei, Yusuke can put up with a painting being taken from him.

"I would be honored," he says. His voice cracks a little bit on the last word, and he hopes it sounds like pride, rather than disgust.

"Of course you would," his sensei says. "Now, we don't have much time to prepare before the exhibit--"

"Two months," Yusuke murmurs.

"But as this will be your first experience of something like this," his sensei says smoothly. "You will of course want to spend your time working on the perfect piece to submit."

"I--"

"Your after school time should be spent here," his sensei tells him. "For the foreseeable future--or at least until the exhibit opens. I can send the car to pick you up from school." He smiles, so insincerely that it instantly puts Yusuke on alert. "To make sure that you're not going to run into any..." There's a pause. "Distractions."

He _had_ heard. Yusuke looks at his sensei, at the insincere smile that's growing actually _smug_ as the two of them stand there in silence. His sensei had, in fact, been close enough to hear the whole conversation between himself and Yu. He knows that Akira is here, and he's putting restrictions on Yusuke to keep him from ever getting a chance to see him. If he's not at school, he'll be here at the atelier. He'll be driven to and from school so that he doesn't even have the freedom of sneaking away during the train ride. Probably after the exhibit in May, there'll be something else his sensei wants him to do, some other way for him to keep Yusuke away from Akira.

He'd thought that by giving his sensei his art, and allowing it to be taken from him and credited to someone else, he would at least be appeasing his sensei and giving himself an opening to look for Akira, or to let Akira come to him. Instead, it doesn't look like he's going to get either his art _or_ his friend.

Yusuke takes a deep breath, and mentally apologizes to Akira. He'll still do what he can. He'll keep his eyes open, and look for a chance to get away from his sensei and go looking. If Akira comes to him, he'll... figure something out. Find _some_ way to talk to him.

"Yusuke?" his sensei prompts. "I'm sure you don't have any problem with this arrangement, do you?"

So Yusuke swallows hard, and shakes his head. He feels trapped, and tricked, and surprisingly angry. But if he shows that right now, he's never going to get a chance to slip through the net of new restrictions that's been placed on him. "No, Sensei," he says quietly. "I... don't have a problem with that at all."

-//-

_April 2_

_Midnight_

-//-

It's a dark and stormy night, five minutes before midnight, and Akira is sitting at one of the cafe tables, tapping his fingers nervously against the surface and staring intently at the dark TV screen against the wall.

It's midnight. It's raining. If his first year in Inaba had taught him anything, these are exactly the right conditions for the Midnight Channel.

Of course, the Midnight Channel hasn't aired in four years--it had stopped after the fog cleared, and never reappeared again. But that had been... well, that had been _before_. Before Akira's nightmare of Lavenza, before Arsene's presence in his mind had risen to something constant and sharp, the way it had been back then.

This is it. He's known for years that someday, he'd get a chance to fight Shadows again, and even to enter the Velvet Room the way Yu used to be able to. This _has_ to be when that is supposed to happen, which means that if the Midnight Channel is ever going to come back on, it would be now.

He's already tried surreptitiously poking at the TV during the day, but he'd just gotten an annoyed comment from Sojiro about how he'd better not be getting fingerprints on the screen--apparently, the Tokyo TVs are as solid and impossible to enter as they've ever been. He hasn't yet figured out what he's going to do if he really can't get into the TV World, but he's starting to get fidgety and nervous about the idea that maybe it's impossible for him to get to there from anywhere other than Inaba, and after all this time he's going to miss his chance to get into the Velvet Room because he was sent away on probation.

The clock on the wall chimes midnight, and Akira's posture goes ramrod straight as he stares at the TV, waiting, expectant, hopeful.

It stays completely dark.

Akira lets out a long, slow breath, feeling like he's deflating as he does so. Okay, so that's... that's not great. But there are still other things he can try, right? He hasn't been able to get in contact with Yusuke yet (because he doesn't have money for train fare, and won't have a school pass until classes start up again, _and_ because the calls he's tried to make from the cafe's phone have just gone straight to voicemail), but it's only a matter of time. Yusuke doesn't live too far from the Shibuya station where Akira will have to transfer trains to get to school, so it can't possibly be that hard to get there. In less than two weeks now, he'll be able to stop by and... figure something out. 

It has to. If that dream he'd had after being arrested is anything to go by, then _something is wrong_. He's not just going to sit around and do nothing, not as long as there's anything he can do to figure out how to make it right.

Thunder rumbles. The clock ticks on to 12:01, then 12:02. The Midnight Channel hasn't appeared, and Akira slides dejectedly off his seat. Might as well get upstairs and try to get some sleep--he's finally gotten the storage space as cleaned up as it's going to get, and at least he's not waking up with his eyes red from dust allergies anymore.

He's halfway up the steps when he hears the door open downstairs.

It's a quiet noise, and almost inaudible under the continuing sound of the storm outside. If Akira had been up in his room, he never would have heard it. He _barely_ hears it from the stairs, and he pauses there, listening hard just to make sure he hadn't imagined it. Leblanc's not being broken into, is it?

There's a second noise--the door shutting this time--and then a scuffling sound.

And so of course Akira turns around to investigate for himself. What's he going to do, call the police? 

It's dark downstairs. Akira hadn't bothered turning any lights on, and even the streetlights from outside are lost in the rain. But he can see that there's someone there, kneeling on a table and reaching up toward one of the lights. Someone small, which makes Akira feel a little less stupid for coming back down here alone. 

He lingers in the shadows near the stairs, and watches as the person finishes fiddling with the lamp, and lowers themselves back to the table. As they do, a flash of lightning briefly illuminates the interior of the cafe--Akira gets a split second view of a girl, younger than him, with long red hair and glasses that cover about half of her face. She stares back at him, apparently seeing him for the first time, then makes a noise and falls off the table with a painful sounding crash.

Before she's back on her feet, Akira has crossed to the far side of the room and hit the light switch next to the door. Soft yellow light fills the room, a warm contrast to the sheets of rain pounding against the door. Akira blinks as his eyes adjust, and he takes another look at the girl. She's crouched in on herself, looking scared and overwhelmed.

It clicks for Akira all at once. Nervous looking teenage girl who apparently has no trouble getting into Leblanc in the middle of the night? There's only one person this could possibly be.

"Are you Futaba?" he asks.

Her answer is to bolt past him out the door so quickly that Akira doesn't even have a chance to _try_ and stop her. He just blinks, trying not to wonder if that terrified look on her face is because of _him_. She's a shut in, right? She would have been scared of anyone, not just him.

Akira moves slowly around the the cafe--first relocking the door, then putting away her umbrella, which she'd run off without bothering to grab. Well, technically it's Sojiro's umbrella--Akira had seen him come in with it just this morning, and leave with it again in the afternoon. Of course, why would a shut in need an umbrella of her own? He hesitates with it in his hands for a second, then shrugs and leans it up in an out of the way place where Sojiro can find it in the morning, and hopefully assume he'd left it there himself.

Small bits of housekeeping done, he turns his attention to figuring out what Futaba had been doing before he came down. Akira switches the lights back off and gives them a minute to cool down, then checks the lamp she'd been messing around with. He finds a very small electronic... _thing_ with a little camera on one end, and a light on the other that flashes a dim red every thirty seconds or so. He's never seen one in person, but he's watched enough TV to guess what it must be. So she's bugging the cafe, for some reason. _Why_?

He hasn't come up with a good answer for himself by the time he eventually climbs the stairs up to the storage room, and settles himself in for half a night's worth of sleep.

But the next morning, he wakes up with a vague idea of why she'd been trying to plant the bug, and also a plan.

Well--part of a plan. A half formed idea, anyway.

Instead of skulking around in his room, cleaning and organizing and generally trying to keep out of Sojiro's way, Akira dresses and heads down to the cafe. It's never too busy here, and today is no exception--when Akira settles himself with a notebook at the counter, Sojiro raises his eyebrows but doesn't complain.

There's a small shelf of books there, and Akira amuses himself for a while flipping through one or two. There's nothing amazing there, but he doesn't have much else to do, and they make the time pass a little more quickly. 

Akira waits until Sojiro has stopped shooting him suspicious glances, and more or less accepted that Akira is just a bored teenager looking for something to do to kill time. As soon as he's slipped into being just a part of the background noise of the cafe, Akira pulls Futaba's little bug out of his pocket, sticks it to the spine of a boring looking book that looks like it's never been moved, and starts to write on a fresh sheet of paper in his notebook.

 _I'M SORRY IF I SCARED YOU LAST NIGHT,_ he writes, and leaves it in front of the camera, folding it in a say that makes it hard to see from anywhere else in the cafe.

Some time passes. Akira flips through another book, and doodles in the margin of a notebook page. He's not expecting Futaba to respond. How would she, even if she was watching, and even if she had anything she wanted to say? 

After what feels like enough time for her to (hopefully) see it, Akira starts writing a second message on a new sheet of paper. He's been thinking, hard, about why a nervous shut in would come and bug the cafe in the middle of the night. And he thinks... well, maybe he's wrong, but he has a theory.

 _THOUGHT YOU MIGHT BE LONELY_ , he writes this time, and leaves that one up.

It's hard, it turns out, to make a friend when you're the only one doing the talking, and when you can't actually talk that much without making yourself sound crazy. Akira does his best anyway. Maybe Futaba is sitting alone in the Sakura house, ignoring him or laughing at his dumb attempts to communicate. Or, maybe, he's getting through.

And hey, it's not like there's anyone else he can talk to without breaking the terms of his probation. School--and a chance to talk to Yusuke--is still a week away. He's tired of staring at the walls.

So that's how he spends his day. Writing messages for Futaba and sometimes making idle, one sided conversation in quiet tones when he gets the chance, hoping she'll understand and maybe even be a little less freaked out by him.

-//-

_April 3_

_Evening_

-//-

Futaba spends the day cooped up in her room, which isn't that unusual for her. She has projects to work on--some low key hacking, just to keep her hand in, a little bit of poking around with some of the books Sojiro brings back for her. And there's that new anime she's been meaning to watch...

There's plenty to keep her busy in here. Plenty of things to do right here in her room, things that don't involve leaving the house, which would be a stupid thing to do and why, why, _why_ did she try it last night in the first place..?

So now she's not leaving any time soon. Nope. No way. Not happening, no matter what.

At around 9:30, Futaba's computer beeps a chipper alert, pulling her attention from the hacking to--

Her bug, the only one she'd had time to plant before Akira showed up and caught her red handed, is alerting her that it's just come online.

Futaba sits up straight and stares at it. It had gone off line last night even before she'd gotten home, and she'd assumed Akira had seen her plant it, removed it, and that would be the end of that. Why's it back online? Her fingers flurry across the keyboard, at last pulling up the feed from the bug. 

It's showing a different view than it would have if it was still in the same place that she'd installed it last night, but the view is still definitely Leblanc. About half the screen is taken up with Akira's shoulder and part of his face, but the other half shows a couple of the booths behind him.

Futaba watches, extremely confused, as the weird boy living over Sojiro's cafe holds a note up to the camera in a careful, deliberate way that makes it obvious that it's just for her.

 _I'M SORRY IF I SCARED YOU LAST NIGHT,_ the note says, and Futaba snorts. It's a defensive noise, because she should not have been scared of him when she was the one breaking in. Not even breaking in, really. She'd had Sojiro's key. She's allowed in the cafe, hypothetically. Just because she never goes or even leaves the house, it doesn't mean she isn't _allowed_.

But she had been scared. She hadn't expected him to be awake and to hear her, and of course she'd had to freak out and run off--

Futaba pulls her legs up onto her chair, pressing herself in small and close. Yea. There are times when she really wishes she could just--change. Things have been getting... worse, lately. Harder. She's not ready to admit, even to herself, that she's seeing things, and hearing things, but every once in a while--just out of the corner of her eye. Just whispers... 

She zones out for a little while, and it takes some time to pull herself back together. When she finally does, Akira has taken away the first note and is in the process of replacing it with a second one.

This one says, _THOUGHT YOU MIGHT BE LONELY_ and Futaba gives a little _ha!_ of surprised laughter before she can stop herself. The note pulls her out of her funk, and for a second at least, she's not thinking about the state of her own mind. It's worth a laugh just for that, even if a part of her is trying _very_ hard not to think about how close to the truth _lonely_ actually is.

And really... how else is she supposed to react to something this ridiculous? Futaba has no idea.

She also does not know how to react to Akira's sporadic running commentary about what's going on in the cafe, which is a little self conscious but also a little bit snarky, and once or twice actually makes Futaba laugh again. It's been a long time since she had an actual face to face conversation with anyone other than Sojiro. This... actually still isn't face to face, and maybe it doesn't even count as a conversation since only one of them's talking, but it's still technically more communication Futaba has had with anyone that isn't an internet handle for a long time.

There's a sudden uptick in activity from the cafe, and Futaba's eyes dart back toward the stream.

" _There_ it is," says Sojiro from somewhere off camera, and then after a few seconds he crosses behind Akira, just barely within frame of the hidden camera, and then off screen again. "I've been looking for that umbrella."

"Oh yea," Akira says, leaning back on his high stool to look at wherever Sojiro's gone off to. "I found it in here last night after you went home." He says it casually, and of course it's perfectly reasonable to think that Sojiro would have brought the umbrella in yesterday, then forgotten to take it back with him.

No one but Futaba catches the quick glance Akira shoots at the camera, a kind of raised eyebrow, _why didn't you take it back with you?_ look that makes Futaba want to argue with him. She hadn't been thinking about umbrellas when she went running back home! Maybe if he hadn't _startled_ her, she wouldn't have--

Halfway down that train of thought, she realizes with a start that she's actually kind of disappointed she won't get a chance to say any of this out loud. Akira--well, despite all appearances and expectations, he doesn't seem that bad. He's the kind of person she might have actually wanted to talk to, if she could actually leave the house without completely freaking out, or if he had a phone like a normal person. Futaba doesn't think she'd mind messaging him. This is the kind of thing that anonymous screen names were made for, and she'd feel a little bit better telling him that _actually she'd left the umbrella there because he'd surprised her and she'd freaked out_ if she could hide behind Alibaba. If she didn't have to actually talk to him out loud...

A voice whispers in her ear, sudden and sharp and cruel, reminding her that she doesn't deserve friends, not someone dirty and broken like her, not the kind of person who would kill her own _mother what kind of child ARE YOUWHATKINDOFMONSTER--_

Futaba lets out a noise that's more of a nervous squeak than she would like to admit, and buries her face in her arms.

-//-

_April 8_

_Night_

-//-

The next few days are a little more interesting than they had been before Futaba's surprise visit to the cafe in the middle of the night. He still has no idea if she's watching the stream from the bug, or even if he'd set it up right. For all he knows, he might have screwed up reinstalling it, and it's not projecting video to anywhere. Futaba either hasn't found a way to communicate back with him or doesn't want to, but at least Akira's having fun coming up with new ways to pass notes or comments to her. It's something to fill the time with until school starts.

And, as an unexpected bonus, all the time he's spending downstairs in the cafe instead of upstairs in his bedroom has spurred Sojiro to start teaching him to brew coffee. Apparently, if he's going to spend all his time downstairs 'taking up seats that paying customers could have had' (and never mind that the cafe has never been more than half full since Akira moved in), he might as well make himself useful. It's something else to do to fill time, and give the days a little bit of routine.

That, and the more time he spends learning to make coffee--and getting it right--the less gruff Sojiro gets around him. It's only a slight relaxing, but... it's helping. Akira feels a tiny bit less like an intruder. It's not home, but it's also not quite as alienating as it had felt at first.

And then one night, he has a dream.

He comes awake to the odd feeling of still being half asleep--caught halfway between between sleep and waking--that he's felt only once before.

When he was dreamt of Lavenza in pain.

Akira opens his eyes, staring at a cracked stone ceiling tinged with a vague hint of blue. The air is unnaturally still, and so quiet that the loudest sound Akira can hear is his own breathing. It gives him the creeps, kind of. But what's worse is when he sits up in bed ( _not_ the same as the mattress stacked on top of loose crates in Leblanc's attic, but something that is somehow even _more_ uncomfortable) he sees that there's a ball and chain around his ankle, and cuffs around his wrists.

He's in jail, he's in jail, _he's back in jail_ , and his breathing gets faster and louder as a kind of panic sets in. He hadn't liked being locked up the first time, and he doesn't like it now. Trapped. Threatened. He wants, with an urgency that he never would have guessed he was capable of before his first stint in jail, after his arrest, to just get out of here.

He shakes his head, trying to clear it, trying to figure out what's going on here and how he'd gotten himself locked up, again--

(He hasn't even done anything wrong this time!)

(Of course, he hadn't done anything wrong the first time. They'd locked him up anyway)

"On your feet, prisoner!"

He jerks at the sudden sound. A girl's voice, young, shouting at him. His attention snaps from his own condition (chained and locked down and dressed in prison stripes) to what's waiting outside his tiny cell.

A face he recognizes. And two he doesn't. Igor behind a desk, and two girls in matching blue outfits just outside the doors. All three are staring at him, but Akira's gaze locks on Igor's, drawn there like there's some kind of magnetism pulling it there.

He's met Igor before. Once. Yu had taken him into the Velvet Room with him, and Akira had sat on a blue limousine seat and looked across the space of a couple of feet to a strange man with a long, crooked nose. Yu had been asking questions and looking for explanations, and Akira had half listened to the conversation while he watched the man. He remembers the spark--strange, but interested and almost _curious_ \--inviting him to cause some trouble.

(And then Akira had stolen some cards like the kind Yu used to summon Persona, and which were exactly the Persona that Akira needed right in that moment in time)

Igor's gaze does not look like that now. It's flat, and cold, and Akira feels like a bug trapped under glass as Igor looks at him.

"Pay attention, prisoner!" the girl says, shouting again--this time as she speaks, she hits the bars of Akira's cell with a nightstick. It clangs, echoing cruelly in the space between Akira and Igor. He flinches, shying away from the insult as much as the violence, fingers pulling back from the bars he'd reached out to grasp before his brain has given his body permission to show his fear like that.

"I'm paying attention," he says. "What--" His eyes flick from one unfriendly face to the next, looking for friends here. Igor studies him unflinchingly. The girls watch him, almost perfect mirrors of each other. One looks maybe a little more sympathetic than the other, but that's not saying much in this case.

It doesn't seem like he's going to find any friends here at all.

"What's going on here?" he asks, quietly. "This isn't how I thought things were going to go."

Igor studies him from behind his desk in the middle of that wide open space, one leg crossed over the other, tapping against the hard floor. "Welcome," he says to Akira. "To my Velvet Room." His voice, as he says the words, is low and almost threatening. Or maybe it's just the setting that makes it seem so dark and antagonistic--in this place, this closed circle of a prison that might have been built just for Akira, practically anything would seem threatening. Akira's never actually heard Igor speak before--in their sole other meeting, Igor had watched events unfold in silence while everybody else talked--but somehow this isn't what he'd imagined.

This voice sends shivers up his spine. It's... different from what he'd expected from Igor. Igor is different. Everything here is different than it should be.

"This doesn't look like the Velvet Room I've seen before," Akira says.

And maybe he's imagining it, but it seems like there's a flicker of surprise in Igor's eyes before it hardens again. "This room is a reflection of your heart," he says, and raises an eyebrow pointedly in Akira's direction.

The implication is pretty clear, even as something in Akira shrinks back from the realization. This place looks the way it does because of _him_. Because he's broken enough rules to land himself in prison. Because _delinquent_ is the part of him that means the most right now.

"I don't," he says. "I--I didn't..."

He wants to explain, as he has already explained so many times while under arrest in the real world, that he hadn't done anything wrong. He hadn't meant to hurt anyone, he'd only wanted to _help_.

He really doesn't think that it's going to do any more good than it had in the real world, though. He keeps quiet, and tries not to think too hard about how really, genuinely awful it feels to be locked away again.

"The game," Igor says after the silence has stretched on for a while. "Is about to start."

"Game," Akira repeats. "What game?"

"Don't think you can question our master, prisoner!" the angry girl says, and Igor gives a low chuckle. 

"I suppose you should be introduced to your wardens," he says, spreading a hand in the angry girl's direction. "This is Caroline. Her quieter sister is Justine."

Akira says nothing. He's holding himself with such tension he can feel his muscles starting to ache.

"But back to the game," Igor says. "You're not properly equipped to play--you'll lose any starting advantages you have if you aren't careful."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Akira says. "What--"

But the question dies unspoken in his mouth, as Igor's appraising expression morphs into a definite frown.

And that's the moment when it hits Akira. Why Igor seems so different. The _truth_.

It's the same as this prison cell. It's because of him. Because he's messed up, pushed too far, gotten into real trouble. He's not ready for whatever this is going to be, whatever game he's supposed to play. _He screwed up_ , and Igor is...

Disappointed in him.

No wonder he seems so different.

"Find a way to enter the game," Igor tells him. "Do it quickly. You don't have much time before it will be too late to make up lost ground."

Akira can feel sleep draining away from him, and wakefulness tugging at his mind--he's still here, in this Velvet Room cell, but he can feel his bed in Leblanc too, and the vague breeze from the window he'd left open. He can feel that he's about to wake up.

"Wait," he says, jerking forward and wrapping his hands around the bars. Caroline makes a movement forward with her nightstick, clearly ready to give the metal another smack--but she freezes in place when Akira blurts, "Lavenza."

Igor's eyebrows go up. Waiting for Akira to go on.

Akira struggles for words. He's afraid of what the answer to his question is going to be. "Is she... is she okay?"

And there's just a beat before Igor says, "There was... an unfortunate incident."

It's the last thing Akira hears before he wakes, eyes flying open, breathing hard. His face is wet. He hadn't cried in the Velvet Room, but somehow he's been crying in his sleep.

An incident. An _unfortunate_ incident. He'd known she was hurt, but...

He's too restless to sleep again, and it's still an hour or so before dawn, too early to really get up and do anything. Akira dries his face then paces for a little while, back and forth across the bedroom floor, wishing he had something to do, or his phone to distract him. There's nothing, though, and his thoughts keep flying around in circles. He wishes he could talk to Yu about the Velvet Room. He wishes he could talk to _anyone_.

He paces. Fidgets. Looks out the window at the streets of Yongen-Jaya below, but they're deserted at this hour. He goes downstairs with the vague thought that maybe Futaba could have broken in again, and when he sees that of course she hadn't, he sits at the counter in front of her camera instead. As pathetic as it is, it's the closest he can get to anyone at all right now.

Upset and unsettled, he folds his arms and rests his chin on top. And then, even though it doesn't seem like it should be impossible after everything that's happened tonight...

He dozes off.

This time, when he dreams, the nightmares are entirely a product of his own imagination.

-//-

_April 9_

_Early Morning_

-//-

Sojiro finds Akira at the counter when he gets in the next morning, folded up into an awkward angle that doesn't look at all comfortable to sleep in. The kid's managing pretty well anyway, not even stirring when Sojiro opens the door and lets the morning sounds of Yongen-Jaya into the still cafe.

He thinks about waking Akira immediately, but something makes him hesitate. Maybe it's the part of Akira's face he can see, the half hidden corner of his genuinely miserable expression. Obviously he's had a rough night, and Sojiro's seen Futaba through enough of those to have some pity in him. He can at least let Akira sleep for a little longer--there's more than half an hour before he'll have to open, and it's usually another half hour after that before any of his regulars actually show up.

Instead of going through his normal morning routine of turning on the TV and starting his inventory of curry ingredients and coffee beans, Sojiro finds himself moving quietly through the kitchen to make a single cup of coffee.

He slides it across the counter toward Akira, and in a few minutes the smell has him blinking and rubbing his eyes. They look slightly red, and Sojiro chooses to believe this is just because of a bad night's sleep.

He does _not_ ask his charge if he's been crying. That, he reminds himself, is none of his business. He has Futaba to worry about, and he's going to--he _has_ to--prioritize her safety over the comfort of a delinquent kid that's only going to be here for a year.

But he lets Akira drink the coffee in silence, starting his morning inventory check while Akira pulls himself together. When the coffee's gone, Sojiro gives him a fairly awkward pat on the shoulder and says, "Get back upstairs, then. We'll be open soon. Can't have you walking around in your pajamas."

"Yea," Akira says. His voice is slightly hoarse, and when he stands up, he hesitates instead of going upstairs. He looks like he's trying to think of a way to start explaining, but can't quite manage to put anything into words.

"Go on," Sojiro says, and this time Akira actually does as he's told.

He's back downstairs in less than fifteen minutes, asking if there's anything he can do to help out--and if he's a little more persistent in sticking around today, if he seems a little more reluctant than usual to be on his own--well, it's not Sojiro's job to notice.

( ~~But he notices anyway~~ )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to chapter two, in which nobody at all is happy!
> 
> lol poor everyone. I was going to cut this chapter off with Akira waking up from the Velvet Room but couldn't quite make myself do it. So he gets... at least a little bit of comfort from Sojiro, at least?
> 
> Also, we are now officially hitting the slowdown where I will not be able to post like three chapters in a week because (a) I burned myself out and need to go back to posting more slowly, and (b) they're starting to call people back to the office at work, which mans I'm back to losing an hour and a half in commuting on weekdays, and don't get home until 6:30 when I am usually too tired to do much writing :(


	3. April 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me at 7:00 this morning, posting chapter 2: I'm going to have to slow down on posting for a while!
> 
> Me at 11:30 at night, posting chapter 3: jk here's a 8,000 word chapter I spent my entire Sunday writing
> 
> (But seriously, do _not_ expect chapter 4 this quickly)

_April 11_

_Morning_

-//-

By the time the first day of school comes, Akira is so ready to get out of Leblanc that he's actually excited about it. Sure, Leblanc's growing on him, and yea, when he'd been to the school earlier to meet the principal and his teacher, they'd seemed to hate him already because they know he's been arrested.

But he's going stir crazy being cooped up in the cafe all day, and even when Sojiro eventually notices and starts sending him out into Yongen-Jaya to pick up supplies and things, it doesn't quite scratch the itch to get out on his own. At least school will be something new.

He wakes up early--no dreams, luckily, he hasn't dreamed of the Velvet Room again since that first night--dresses in his new Shujin Academy uniform, and heads downstairs to where Sojiro has already set out a plate of curry for him.

(They've been getting along a little better, since the night Akira fell asleep at the counter. He thinks Sojiro feels bad for him)

Curry for breakfast had seemed a little strange the first few days, but it's good and it's free and hey, Akira's eaten weird bento leftovers for breakfast _plenty_ of times back home. This morning, he just thanks Sojiro for the meal and scarfs it down as quickly as possible.

"Don't eat too fast," Sojiro says, leaning against the counter a few feet away and watching him skeptically. "You'll choke."

"I don't want to miss the train," Akira says.

"You have time," Sojiro says. "You remember the route, don't you?"

Akira nods. They've been over it several times already, with Sojiro quizzing him twice last night alone. "I can take the train from the Yongen-Jaya station to Shibuya," he says. "Then transfer there. The train lets off five minutes from school, I can walk the rest of the way."

"Right," Sojiro says. "Good. I don't want you getting lost your first day." He makes a face. "I'm _sure_ social services would have something to say about that, if your school calls and complains."

"Don't worry," Akira assures him. "I'll remember, I'm fine."

"You're sure?" Sojiro says. "Because I know you don't have a phone, and you can't look up the route if something goes wrong."

"I'll be fine," Akira assures him, but Sojiro still writes down his own cell phone number and makes Akira bring it with him.

"For emergencies," he says. "Use a public phone or something if you need to."

Akira thinks about pointing out--again--that he'll be fine. Instead, he stuffs the paper into a pocket, and focuses on the curry. When he's finished it all, he calls another thank you, gives Futaba's camera a surreptitious wave goodbye, and dashes out the door.

Sojiro calls after his retreating back, something about taking an umbrella with him because it's supposed to rain soon, but Akira's already out on the street by the time Sojiro finishes shouting the reminder at him. He glances upward, at cloudy, dreary skies, but decides to just risk it. It's not raining yet after all. Maybe he'll get lucky and it'll stay dry until he gets to school.

It's raining before the train stops at Shibuya, of course, and when Akira has changed lines, and gotten off at the stop nearest his school, it's absolutely pouring. Definitely should have brought the umbrella, he tells himself as he puts his head down and tries to focus on powering through the rain. Next time he definitely will, but it's a little too late to go back now so he'll just have to put up with being wet through class--

He turns a corner and collides with someone coming the other way. They both fall to the ground, bags flying open and supplies going everywhere. Akira shakes himself off and pushes wet hair away from his eyes. "Sorry," he tells the stranger on the ground in front of him--a boy with hair died blonde, and a _very_ loose idea of how school uniforms are supposed to work. Akira recognizes the same plaid pants as the ones he's wearing, but the boy's t-shirt is definitely not part of the official dress code.

"Wasn't looking where I was going," the boy mutters. "Shit, d'you see my phone...?"

Akira looks around and spots it--it's slid half under his bag, so he grabs it and hands it back. The phone vibrates slightly in his head as he does so, but Akira is distracted by the rain and the collision, and doesn't even notice. Neither of them sees an app installing itself onto the first phone Akira has touched since coming to Tokyo. Neither of them notices the icon with the red eye that has suddenly appeared on the phone's home screen.

"Thanks," the boy mutters, shoving his phone into his pocket. He pushes himself up off the sidewalk, eyes fixed on something over Akira's shoulder. "Damn," he mutters, half to himself. "What's that asshole doing with her?"

Akira stands too and, curious, turns to look over his shoulder. About half a block back, right where the boy's glare had been pointed. he sees a blonde girl talking to a man driving a car. His expression is a smile _just_ this side of cocky, and sends an uncomfortable chill down Akira's back. Yea. There's something in that expression that sets off serious alarm bells. Akira looks at the girl, but her head is turned away from him and her long hair hides any hint he might have gotten about what she's thinking.

"Who are they?" he asks.

"Huh?" the boy's attention witches from the car to Akira. "You seriously don't know Kamoshida?"

_("Match detected")_

"Should I?" Akira asks.

"That perv?" blonde boy asks. "How do you _not_?"

_("Match detected")_

He looks so offended by this that Akira--despite the serious creep vibes car creep (Kamoshida?) is giving off--finds himself hiding a smile. He just shrugs in answer.

"Dude thinks he's the king of his own castle," blonde boy mutters, turning to look again at Kamoshida and the girl he's talking to. He seems to be asking her something, and she's shaking her head no.

_("Match detected")_

"What's his deal?" Akira asks.

"You really _don't_ know anything about him, do you?" blonde boy asks. "Don't you go to Shu--" And then, halfway through the word, he cuts himself off. The conversation between Kamoshida and the girl is getting a little more heated, which is clearly pissing off blonde boy. "Hey Ann!" he hollers, and the girl looks up at him. "Ann, why're you talking to this creep?"

He runs over to join the confrontation, and after a last rude comment from Kamoshida, the man drives off, going toward where Akira is standing, and then past him down the road. Akira squints in through the car's open window, getting a decent look at Kamoshida.

Not a _nice_ look, because Kamoshida is a definitely not _nice_ looking guy, but a good long one.

Akira makes a face, but since the confrontation's already been broken up, he puts the whole thing out of his mind and keeps walking. The rain's slowed him down, and if he doesn't hurry, he's going to be late for school. 

-//-

_April 11_

_Morning_

-//-

"Can't believe you were talking to that guy," Ryuji mutters.

Ann crosses her arms and levels him with the kind of glare he remembers all too well from middle school. "I didn't need our help," she tells him.

"Seems like you _did_ ," Ryuji says. "Kamoshida's a creep, Ann!"

"I can take care of myself," she says. "And now that I've wasted all this time arguing with you, I'm going to be late for class." She hoists her bag higher up on her shoulder, and sharpens the glare.

Ryuji winces. It's gotten _worse_ since middle school.

He decides the best thing to do would be to at least _try_ and make it up to her, so he pulls a face and rubs the back of his neck. Not exactly fair that she's blaming _him_ for making her late when she'd spent _way_ longer arguing with Kamoshida than with him. "Okay," he mutters. "I'm sorry. Thought you might _not_ want to get stuck in a car with that guy."

Maybe it's his imagination, but her angry look... wavers, a little. It doesn't exactly go away, or stop being angry, but it's a step in the right direction.

"Anyway," Ryuji says. "I know a shortcut up to Shujin."

_("Match found. Searching for route.")_

He gestures up an alley. "We'll get to class on time. Promise."

"Fine," Ann says. "Let's go check out your shortcut."

So Ryuji leads her around a corner and up an alley, and...

"Ryuji?" Ann asks, and there's no anger in her voice now, just the same confusion that has Ryuji's mouth hanging open. "Is that a _castle_?"

-//-

_April 11_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Akira just barely gets to school before the first bell, and meets Kawakami outside the staff room just as she's hurrying out of it with a pile of papers clutched in her arms.

"Oh," she says, sounding almost disappointed. "You came after all."

"Sorry I'm late," he says. "It--" But he doesn't think _I forgot my umbrella and spent twenty minutes hiding under an awning to see if the rain would let up_ is going to cut it as an excuse. "Sorry."

"Technically you're not late," Kawakami tells him. "So let's just..." She lets out a long suffering sigh that makes it extremely clear she would rather be doing pretty much _anything_ other than dealing with him. "I'll show you where the classroom is, and introduce you as a transfer student."

"Thanks," Akira says. He hesitates, then says, "That's... all you're going to say, right? Just that I'm transferring in?" He's learning, since coming to Tokyo, just how hard it is to be _the delinquent kid_ to everyone he meets.

"Of course," Kawakami says. "This is a school, we're not going to just start spreading rumors about a student's--" She drops her voice. "Criminal record."

"Okay," Akira says, trying to focus on her words and not the disapproving look she's giving him. "Thank you."

She doesn't say anything, just walks a little bit faster. Akira is taller, and has no trouble keeping pace as they make the short trip to the second year classroom. A few people look at them as they pass, but most seem hardly interested, which reassures him. 

His introduction to his new class goes relatively smoothly. A new student transferring in at the start of the school year, before the class has had a chance to really click together, isn't as interesting as someone coming in halfway through the year. Kawakami tells them that Akira has come to Tokyo for the year from a small town a few hours away. Akira tells them his name and says something forgettable about hoping for a good year. Then he's directed toward a seat near the window, behind an empty desk that belongs to--as it turns out during roll call--a girl called Ann Takamaki.

Ann. Hadn't that been the name of the girl talking to the creep this morning? Akira feels a slight stirring of unease, wondering if maybe he should have stuck around and done... something. 

The feeling lingers the rest of the morning, until lunch when Akira goes looking for somewhere quiet to eat, and passes Kamoshida on the first floor hallway. He'd been kind of half imagining that the creep had gone back to find Ann, and they'd be off somewhere in Tokyo now, doing... well, his imagination had stopped short of coming up with exactly what Kamoshida might want with a high school student, but there are all kinds of horrible possibilities. 

But no. Here's Kamoshida, stalking around the building (like the kind of a castle, Akira remembers blonde boy saying, and mentally agrees that it's accurate). So maybe Ann is just off somewhere playing hooky or something?

Still weird, though. She'd been in her school uniform, so obviously heading here. 

Akira pokes around a little bit, sticking his head into the other second year classes to look for blonde boy (when he asks a few people, the description gives him the name Ryuji Sakamoto), but he's nowhere to be found either.

 _Weird_. But not... necessarily bad, right? It could still be the two of them skipping class together.

In their school uniforms. On the first day of classes.

Sure.

But Akira doesn't know what to do, doesn't know if his half formed worries are right, doesn't even really know what he's worried _about_. So, even though he's worried, he goes back to class at the end of the lunch break, sits quietly in his desk, and tries his best to focus.

Half an hour later, the door to the classroom opens. Akira--and everyone else in the room--turns to stare at her, and she flushes pink. Her clothes look more disheveled than they had when Akira saw her this morning, and she's breathing hard like she's been running.

"I'm sorry," she says, as the silence stretches on too an awkward length. "I--" She stops, jaw working. Akira, with years of experience getting into trouble and coming up with excuses to get himself back out again, recognizes the look of someone trying to come up with a lie.

"Are you feeling any better?" he calls, leaning forward slightly to get her attention. "You..." He meets her gaze, tries to communicate just through his eyes that he's lying to cover for her. "You didn't look too good when I saw you on the way into school this morning."

For a beat she doesn't get it, then her eyes go wide. "Y-es!" she says, with such deliberate enunciation that Akira wants to slam his head into the desk. "Yes, I was feeling--sick, this morning. So I went home and now I'm feeling better so I wanted to come back. For the first day of school."

Okay, mental note. Ann Takamaki, not a great actress.

Luckily the teacher doesn't seem to notice or care, and he sends her to her desk with a stern warning not to be so late again. Then he goes back to lecturing, and the class gradually goes back to being bored.

Well, mostly. Akira hears some whispering as the afternoon wears on, about how clearly he and Ann are going out, and he'd better watch out if he's trying to steal her from Kamoshida, and some other nonsense. He ignores it as best he can, and after class he stands up immediately to try and beat his classmates--and their rumors--outside.

He doesn't realize that anyone's following him until he's on the street outside, and Ann calls his name.

"Akira!" she says, and then again--when he stops and looks back at her--"It is Akira, right?"

"Yea," Akira says. "And you're Ann, right?"

She nods, and he stops on the side of the road so that she can catch up to him.

"I'm Ann," she agrees. "Yea." She's holding her bag a little more tightly than is actually necessary, Akira notices, and she looks absolutely exhausted. "Listen, I just wanted to say thank you for, uh... you know. Covering for me when I walked into class late today."

Akira shrugs. "No problem," he says. "I mean, you looked like you didn't want to answer a bunch of questions about... whatever you were doing this morning."

"I really, _really_ didn't," Ann says, with feeling. "But I'm sorry if you get in any trouble because of it. I heard some of the stuff people were saying in class after I got back. It's probably just going to get worse." She offers him an apologetic smile.

"Well I hear I'm your boyfriend and I'm trying to steal you from the--what is he, the volleyball coach?"

Ann winces. "I am _not_ dating Kamoshida," she says.

Akira hurries to reassure her. "I know," he says. "I was kidding, sorry. That guy looks like a complete creep, I didn't think anyone in their right mind would actually go out with him."

"Then you're smarter than most of this school," Ann mutters. Then at a more normal volume, she adds, "Anyway. I just really wanted to say thank you. I won't be that late again."

She starts to walk past him, but Akira calls her name. "Listen," he says. "I know you said you didn't want to answer questions, but--are you okay?"

He knows, before she gets a word out, that she's not going to tell him the truth. She's doing the same opening-and-closing her mouth thing that she'd done in class this morning, and even if he'd helped her, she's going to keep her secrets to herself. She clears her throat, and says, "It's actually kind of personal, and--"

"Yo! Ann!"

"Ryuji," she says, turning to face the blonde boy from this morning as he comes running up to join them. "Hi."

"Hey," Akira adds, giving him a little half wave.

"Oh," Ryuji says, noticing and then recognizing him. "Hey, man. I, uh..." He looks at Ann. "I figured we should probably talk about--you know. This morning. And the cas--"

"That's a good idea!" Ann says, so loudly it covers up whatever Ryuji had been about to say. "But we should go and do it somewhere less crowded." She grabs his arm and physically drags him down the street. "Sorry, Akira," she calls. "I'll see you in class tomorrow?"

"See you," he says, and--since they're heading in the same direction he'd been planning to go--gives them a minute or two before heading down the street in the same direction.

He has a pass for the train now, and Yusuke lives not too far from Shibuya station. It's about time he took a walk down that way.

-//-

_April 11_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Yusuke's place turns out to be a dead end. Madarame's hanging around, pointedly visible through the building's windows, and Akira is _well_ aware of the artist's opinion of him.

Probably better to try again another day.

So Akira goes wandering around Shibuya instead. It's busy, packed with people, and full of all kinds of shops and restaurants. He doesn't have any money (he's planning on getting a part time job in a week or two, but wants to figure out school and the neighborhood first), but window shopping is free. And there's _lots_ here to look at. 

Which is probably why he misses the bright blue door in an alleyway the first time he walks past it. 

It's not until he's heading back up the street, on his way to the station to catch a train back to Yongen-Jaya, that he catches a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye and stops dead in his tracks. 

There's a door to the Velvet Room right here in Shibuya, and there are bars on it.

One of the twins (the angry one, Caroline) is perched on top of the door, and notices him a few seconds after he spots her. Akira debates whether or not he actually wants to go over there (answer--no he certainly does not, but he probably should) then tries to make himself look less reluctant than he feels, and heads toward her.

"Hi," he says. "I guess you weren't a dream after all."

She looks at him, flatly unimpressed. "Our master wants to talk to you, prisoner," she says.

"About what?" Akira asks, because he doesn't really want to go into the Velvet Room and its chains and bars again. He doesn't want to talk to Igor, especially after what he'd said about Lavenza.

Especially after _how_ he'd said it. Like it didn't matter. Like he doesn't care that she's been hurt or scared or worse.

Caroline doesn't answer. Instead she grins, hops down from her spot on top of the Velvet Room door, and gives him a swift quick that has him toppling through before he can stop himself.

It's not a dream, this time. The floaty, surreal feeling of being half awake and half asleep is gone, and when Akira slams into the cell--wearing his prisoner's stripes, and chained up the way he had been before--he's at least awake enough to take it all in with more detail than he had before.

Not that there's much that he really wants to see there. A circle of cells--empty except for his--ringed around Igor's desk in the middle of the room. Dim, purple tinted light. 

It's worse than the prison in the real world had been. 

"What did you want to talk to me about?" he asks Igor. "Caroline said there was something." He feels weirdly naked here, without either his glasses or his mask to cover his face. He's sure that Igor can read every nervous, uncertain thought passing through his mind, and he doesn't like it at all.

"You're treading a thin line," Igor tells him. "And looking in all the wrong directions."

"I don't understand what that means," Akira says. He's used to cryptic clues and warnings from the Velvet Room residents, so this vague warning doesn't bother him (much). It still doesn't make it any easier to understand.

"It means," Igor says. "That this game will end too soon, if you do not make some effort toward winning."

 _Winning_ has never been what fighting Shadows is all about, though. Sure, winning in a fight is important because the alternative is dying, but it's not... it's not the way Igor makes it sound.

"What is this all about?" Akira asks quietly. "I mean... really about? Or is that not something you can tell me?"

Igor looks at him for a long, long time. Then he says, "Consider this a rehabilitation, of a kind. As that rehabilitation advances... you may learn more."

More vagaries and cryptic clues. But it does confirm one thing--if this is some kind of rehabilitation, it means that he really _has_ screwed up, and he really isn't worthy of being here and fighting whatever threat is coming.

"Okay," he says. "I... can wait. To know more about what's going on."

Igor nods at him. "We will see," he says. "But for now..." He leans forward, and Akira feels frozen under the weight of his stare. "Open your eyes, _Trickster_."

Akira starts. He... somehow, he doesn't like the way Igor says the word.

"Find your way into this game," Igor tells him. "Or your rehabilitation will never get very far at all."

"And... what do I need to do that?" Akira asks.

Igor only shakes his head, and the question is instead answered by one of the twins.

"This is _your_ rehabilitation, prisoner," Justine says quietly. "You won't have much chance to learn if you're not given the opportunity to do so on your own."

Akira's pretty sure they could at least help him figure out what he's supposed to be doing so that he can actually _do_ it, but doesn't argue. It'd be easier if they'd point him in the right direction, but--

He'll figure it out.

He will.

The visit to the Velvet Room doesn't last much longer after that, and in only a few moments Akira is stumbling back out onto the real world streets of Shibuya. He shakes himself slightly and straightens up, looking around. He glances around, hoping no one's noticed him stepping out of an extra-dimensional prison cell, but no one spares him a second look. 

Well, nobody except Caroline, who's back on her perch sitting on top of the door, legs swinging slightly through thin air. Akira glances her way for just a second, and then heads back to Yongen-Jaya.

There's no relief at Leblanc, though. Yongen itself is reassuringly calm and quiet, but when Akira walks into the cafe, he can feel a weird tension in the atmosphere so thick that it hits him like a physical punch to the face. He freezes in the doorway, taking in the scene in front of him and trying to get a better idea of what's going on.

Sojiro's standing on the far side of the room, close to the TV, glaring at a man Akira hasn't seen before. Their postures practically scream that they're in the middle of an argument, even if they're not doing any actual screaming themselves right at that moment.

"--heard you have a kid living up there," the stranger's saying, gesturing at the stairs up to Akira's room. "That'd be Futaba, wouldn't it?"

"No," Sojiro says. 

"Don't lie to me," the stranger says. "If you're keeping her in an attic, that's a clear argument in favor of custody reverting to me."

Akira frowns at that. His very first day in Tokyo, Sojiro had mentioned Futaba's relatives, and alluded vaguely to them not being responsible enough to take care of a pet.

"I'm not lying," Sojiro says, and his voice is so calm that for a second it tricks Akira into thinking he's not actually angry at all. Then he catches a glimpse of Sojiro's expression, and makes a mental note to never, ever do anything to piss his guardian off this badly. "I've been appointed temporary guardian of a second ward for the year. _He's_ living up there."

"Sure," says Futaba's increasingly-terrible-looking relative. "You just happen to have stumbled on a second pathetic little foundling to take in?"

Akira's outrage at this is at least as much on Futaba's behalf as his own. After his visit to the Velvet Room earlier today, he just... _really_ isn't in the mood for this guy.

"Yes," Sojiro says, tone clipped. "And you know, he's still new here. Still settling in. I'm actually expecting a call from social services to check up on him later today." He makes a show of checking the time on his watch. "In a few minutes, actually."

"I'm sure you are," says the relative, not sounding at all convinced.

"And I don't think you'd like them to hear the full story of how you treated Futaba while she was _your_ charge."

The man scoffs, but looks maybe a little less confident. In any other circumstance, Akira's first instinct would have been to call up Sojiro and let him fake a social services call right that second. He wants this guy _out_ of here, and if they can use social services to scare him out of the cafe, well at least that means they're going to be actually useful for once.

But he doesn't have a phone.

Neither of the two arguing adults have noticed him though, and that gives him a tiny window of opportunity to do... something.

His eyes land on the yellow public phone sitting on the counter next to his usual spot by Futaba's camera. His hand, reaching instinctively to the pocket where he usually keeps his phone. Instead he finds the piece of paper with Sojiro's number on it.

Worth a shot.

He moves quietly to the counter, sitting in his usual seat and hunching over slightly to block the two adults' view of the phone with his shoulders. The camera catches his eye as he leans forward, and he hesitates, wondering if Futaba is sitting by her computer and watching her relative and Sojiro argue.

"It's gonna be fine," he says quietly, and smiles at the camera before turning with deliberate casualness to the phone.

The argument behind him is still going on as Akira slowly dials Sojiro's number with the public phone. Then, just as he hears Sojiro's cell phone start to ring, he (carefully) balances the phone on top of its cradle, making it look like it's hung up without _actually_ hanging it up.

There's a pause of a heartbeat. Maybe two. Akira pulls out a book and pretends to be busy reading it while he imagines Sojiro trying to figure out why his own cafe is calling him.

He turns his head slightly and meets Sojiro's gaze, then jerks his head at the yellow phone and mouths _social services_.

Sojiro gets it, and nods, and smiles at Futaba's gross relative. "That's social services calling now," he says. "Probably to set up a meeting to check in on this guy."

He nods at Akira, who positions himself more firmly in front of the phone and adopts an expression of disinterest from behind his glasses. "Hi," he says. "I live upstairs."

The relative, who had actually been in the middle of arguing his case on the basis that Sojiro's second ward couldn't possibly be real and the kid leaving upstairs _must_ be Futaba, scowls at him.

But he doesn't say anything. He gives Sojiro's phone a thoroughly suspicious look, then mutters something angry and threatening and storms out of the cafe. The second he's out the door, Akira jumps to his feet and goes to watch him walk up the street, to make sure he turns away from the Sakura house instead of toward it.

When he sees that, he breathes out a little sigh of relief and goes back to his seat. Sojiro's already behind the counter again, holding the phone in one hand and raising his eyebrows at Akira.

"What?" Akira asks.

"Nothing," Sojiro says. "Nothing..." He hangs up the phone and beckons Akira back behind the counter. "Come on, then. You want another coffee lesson?"

"Yea," Akira says. "Sure. Thank you."

And for the next half hour, they talk about nothing but coffee beans.

-//-

_April 11_

_Evening_

-//-

Yu hasn't heard from either Naoto or Yusuke since reaching out to the two of them, which means that the search for Akira has stalled out slightly. He _has_ talked with his uncle and Nanako, so he knows talks with the guardianship lawyer are going slowly.He knows that both of them are worried. He knows that Nanako's been upset, sleeping badly and struggling in school ever since Akira left, although she hasn't told her dad that.

Yu's half thinking about getting on a train over the weekend and going down to see if there's anything he can do to help. It's not like he's doing any good in Tokyo, and...

And it's just as he's walking through Shibuya, trying for the dozenth time to figure out if there's anything he can do, when he sees a door.

And he's been through Shibuya plenty of times. He'd been here three days ago, he's walked past this alley dozens of times, and if that door had been here before, Yu definitely would have noticed.

But he sees it now, and of course makes a beeline directly toward the door, looking up at the girl sitting over it like some kind of guardian. She looks back at him, expression half hidden behind an eyepatch. What Yu can see of it, however, does not look promising. He tries a friendly approach anyway.

"Hello," he calls up at her, and then his brain stalls slightly as he tries to figure out what to say next--judging by her clothes and her position on the door, she must be a resident of the Velvet Room. And the ones Yu's known have never been much for small talk. "New to Tokyo?" he asks, keeping a smile on his face in spite of her glare.

"Who are _you_?" she asks. 

"My name's Yu," he says. "I, uh..." He gestures to the Velvet Room door. "I used to spend a lot of time in a place like that."

She drops off the top of the door to stand between it and Yu, then crosses her arms and gives him a glare. "Maybe you did," she says. "But you're not allowed in this one. It's for our inmate. No one else allowed in or out."

"No," Yu says. "I, uh... I kind of figured as much." Half guessed, anyway--he'd thought that since he's _already_ been a guest of the Velvet Room that he might be able to get in now, but on the other hand Akira had never been able to get into the Velvet Room in Inaba until Yu brought him in himself.

Hang on.

"Your, uh... your inmate," he says tentatively. "He wouldn't happen to be called Akira Kurusu, would he?"

"Just stay away from here," the girl tells him. "You're not part of this, whoever you are."

Yea. Sure. Except that the only other person Yu knows who can see the Velvet Room door is Akira, and Akira is somewhere in Tokyo. There's a better than decent chance that he's going to find his way to the Velvet Room door eventually, and this is the first solid lead he's gotten on Akira in weeks.

"I'm not going to make any promises," he says, keeping his voice polite because that never hurt anyone. "But I'll leave for now."

"And _stay_ away," the girl tells him, as Yu backs up and heads the way he'd come, up the alley toward the main street. 

"No chance," he mutters under his breath.

His phone buzzes as he turns the corner, and Yu pulls it out to read the message.

Only it's not a message. It's a new app, installing itself onto his phone without any prompting from him. Yu frowns at it, because what he does not need today is someone trying to hack him. He taps at the app, careful not to open it in case that starts some kind of virus or something, and drags it into his phone's trash. A notification appears, asking for confirmation.

_DELETE APP: METANAV [YES/NO]?_

He taps yes, and the app's icon--a butterfly on a pale blue background--disappears from his screen.

Weird.

He doesn't dwell on the app though, instead turning his attention back to the Velvet Room, and how it might help him to find Akira. Maybe it's time to touch base with Naoto, and see if she's made any progress in her investigation. He dials the phone as he heads toward the train station, and Naoto picks up on the third ring.

"This is Naoto."

"Hey," Yu says. "It's me."

Her tone warms from it's cool professionalism as she recognizes his voice. "Calling to check if I've made progress with Akira?" she asks.

"Yea," Yu admits. "I know if you'd actually found anything you would have told me, but I was hoping... I don't know. That you had a lead, or an idea, or..." He sighs. "I don't know. Something."

"Sorry, Yu," Naoto says, and she sounds it. "I was able to verify that he _is_ here in Tokyo, but the questions I was asking apparently raised some red flags. As soon as I got that far, people started to shut down. There's someone with some high level connections that wants Akira kept secret."

" _Why_?" Yu asks.

"I'm working on it," Naoto says. "I'm meeting with someone today that might have some connections I don't have access to. He has a reputation as a pretty good detective, too--he might even be able to suggest a few ways of tracking him down that I haven't thought of."

"If there's a way of finding him that someone else has thought of and you haven't, I'll be shocked."

"Thank you," Naoto says. "But I've worked with him a few times since coming to Tokyo. You've heard of Goro Akechi?"

"You mean 'the second advent of the Detective Prince'?" Yu asks.

Naoto makes an irritated noise from the other side of the phone when she hears the nickname, and for just a second Yu smiles. It's not really a smiling situation, but just being able to talk to a friend makes things look a little brighter.

"That is what the news is calling him," Naoto agrees. "Yes. And I assume that's why we keep being called in to consult on the same cases. But... he is intelligent, he has more connections and sources with people in Tokyo than I do, and I think he might be able to help."

"Okay," Yu says. "I guess anything's worth a shot. Thanks, Naoto."

"Of course," she says, matter of factly. "You're not the only one worried about Akira, Yu. We all want him home safe."

And then she hangs up.

Yu looks down at his phone, thinking how lucky he is to have friends like the ones he's made in Inaba--

And then he frowns, because the butterfly app is back.

-//-

_Somewhere between worlds, something small and broken drifts, gradually, toward nothingness. With so much taken, so much of itself--of herself--ripped away, it's only sheer force of will keeping her from dissolving into nothing at all._

_But she isn't going to let that happen. There is someone she cares about, someone she needs to protect._

_Someone who needs her, right now, to be present in a way she simply can't be. She's cut off from her Trickster, blocked from reaching him in any way that counts. She can be a voice on the wind, a feeling in the air-- but no more. She can't give him what he needs._

_But there are others. Other people she can still reach, e_ _ven with what little she has left._

_-//-_

Yu tries a second time to delete the butterfly app, but it's not going anywhere.

-//-

_April 11_

_Midnight_

_-//-_

Akira is woken from a dead sleep by the sound of a phone ringing downstairs. He has no idea what time it is, but it's dark out, and he's tired, and the phone _just keeps ringing_ so eventually he drags himself out of bed and down the stairs to answer it.

The clock on the wall says five past midnight.

Akira rubs at his eyes and picks up the phone. "'lo?" he mumbles.

There's nothing but silence on the other end.

"Hello?" Akira says again, a little more coherently this time. He can hear someone breathing, but there's still nobody there. He hangs up.

A second later, the phone rings again. Akira glares at it until finally it stops.

And then immediately starts back up.

The ringing noise is starting to drill through to the inside of his head, and he's not getting back to sleep until the mystery caller stops calling. He picks up the phone a second time, and says, "Listen, if this is a prank call or something, do you think you could wait until morning? I--"

"This is Futaba," a quiet voice says.

Akira shuts up immediately.

"Um," she says. "S-sorry for calling so late. And not saying anything the first time you picked up. But this is... this is really hard for me."

"Yea," Akira says, settling into his usual seat at the counter. "Sure. Take your time." 

"I saw you helping Sojiro out with my uncle earlier," Futaba says. "Thank you."

"Of course," Akira says. So the camera _has_ been working, and she _has_ been watching. Good to know. "He seemed like a huge creep."

"Understatement," Futaba says firmly. "And I saw... you used this phone to call Sojiro, right? The one I'm calling you on?"

"Yea," Akira says. "I don't have a cell phone anymore, and it was the only thing I could think of."

"It was smart," Futaba says. "But I thought maybe next time--you know, if it ever happens again, I..."

She trails off, and Akira waits patiently as the silence stretches. There's pretty much no chance he's going back to sleep after this anyway.

"I wanted to give you something," Futaba blurts. "But I don't--I don't want to leave the house again. Can you come here?"

"Uh," Akira says. "I mean, the first day I got here, Sojiro kind of threatened to report me to child services if I ever came _near_ you."

"It's the middle of the night," Futaba says. "And he goes to bed early, he's fast asleep."

"You want me to come over _now_?"

"Sure," Futaba says. "You can climb in through the window, and if you get caught I'll take care of Sojiro."

Akira hesitates.

"I'm on the first floor," Futaba tells him. "Or if you don't want to get in through the window, I guess we could figure something else out."

She's really set on this, apparently, which means it's just a question of how and when. 

"Well it won't be the first window I've climbed through in the middle of the night," he says.

"You're weird," Futaba tells him. "Come on. I'm opening my window."

She hangs up, and Akira dashes upstairs for shoes before Futaba calls back to tell him she's changed her mind. He creeps through dark streets to the Sakura house, then hoists himself over the wall and around the side of the house to the only open window he can see.

On the other side is a room _packed_ with so much stuff it takes Akria a couple seconds to blink, and look around, and take it all in. He sees computers, and junk food, and a display of carefully posed Featherman figures. There are bags full of what looks like trash or old newspapers, and the floor is littered with more of them. 

What he _doesn't_ seein this room is any sign of anybody else.

"Futaba?" Akira whispers. "Futaba!"

There's a small noise from the closet, like someone moving around inside.

Right. Shut in.

"Hey," he says, keeping his tone as calm as he possibly can. "I came like you asked me to, and if you want me to..." He shrugs. "I don't know, stay on this side of the room, or turn around or something...?"

There's a quiet thud from inside the closet, and then it slides slowly open. "No," Futaba says quietly. "I'm... coming out."

She does come out, although she stands with her back to the still open closet door as if she's thinking about dashing back inside at the first sign of trouble.

They stand there in silence for a few seconds, then Akira asks, "So why did you want me to come over here?"

"I wanted to give you something," Futaba says. "Because you helped me today, and--and because if it ever happens again, it might be easier if you had that." She points to her desk, and Akira looks in that direction, takes a couple steps toward it, and the phone sitting there. He picks it up, and looks back at her. "This is for me?"

(There's a buzz. An app installs itself)

"It's my old phone," Futaba says, twisting her fingers together nervously. "I upgraded a couple months ago, so I don't need it anymore, and..." She's speaking more rapidly now and staring at the floor. "If you ever need to make a call again like you did today, it'll be easier with that and also--" She pauses for a breath, and also possibly to steel her nerves. "I wanted to be able to text you. Sometimes. Maybe."

"Yea," Akira says. "Whenever you want, but--" He holds the phone back out to her. "I can't take this. I mean, what about the cost of the plan?"

She looks up at him, and grins, and there is something in that smile that resonates deeply with Akira as Trickster. "I hacked our phone carrier and added that onto Sojiro's plan with a new number," she tells him. "He'll never notice, it's not going to add to the bill or anything, so..." She trails off, eyebrows raised to communicate clearly that she's waiting for a reaction, and also that she expects the reaction to be impressed.

"So you're a hacker now?" Akira asks.

"Yep," Futaba says. "So are you taking the phone or not?"

"Yea," Akira says. "Thank you, Futaba."

_("Match detected.")_

She shrugs. "You _did_ help with my un--"

"Did you hear something?" Akira interrupts.

"What? No."

Akira looks down at Futaba's old phone--his new phone--and the search screen there. "Why's it searching your name?" he asks, holding it up for her to see.

She takes a nervous couple steps forward so that she's close enough to see the screen too. "That's weird," she says. "I wiped that phone when I upgraded, there shouldn't be anything on it except the basic stuff."

Akira hits the home key. There's a messaging app, one for the internet, one for making actual phone calls, and one for the app store. And, right in the middle of the screen, a bright red icon with a picture of an eye. Akira taps it, and the search screen with Futaba's name opens back up.

"Let me see it," Futaba says, so Akira tosses the phone over to her. She catches it and for several minutes fiddles with the phone. Then she goes to her computer, plugs it in, and spends several _more_ minutes tapping away at the keyboard there.

Akira sits down on Futaba's bed, trying not to disrupt the piles of paper there.

"Something wrong?" he asks.

"This app isn't an app," Futaba informs him.

"What does that me--"

"There's no record of where it came from, nothing I can get into or reprogram, it just--exists." She frowns. "I don't know what it is."

Akira gets up, then hesitates before taking a single step. "Is it okay if I come over there?" he asks.

Futaba's fingers freeze on her keyboard, and she thinks about it for a few long seconds. "I... yea," she says quietly. "Yea."

Akira moves to stand a step or two behind her, so they can both see the phone. "Maybe we should try to use it," he suggests.

"A weird app that showed up out of nowhere and could have come from _anyone_?" Futaba asks.

"Yea," Akira says. "Don't you want to know what it does?"

She actually meets his eyes, then grins again. "Yea," she admits. 

There are three criteria on the app's screen, with one of them--person--already filled in with Futaba's name. Location and Distortion are still blank.

"What's distortion mean?" Akira asks.

"Dunno," Futaba answers. "Location might be where we are now." She holds the phone up, and rattles off the address of the house.

The app announces a match, and a second search field fills in.

"A distortion is something that's been... blown out of proportion," Akira says. "Or misinterpreted. Something distorted about you, maybe?"

"Rude," Futaba mutters under her breath.

"Just brainstorming," Akira says. "Okay, so maybe something about you and this house? To link it up to the other two search terms?"

And so they spend a solid half hour just listing off things that are in Futaba's room, with only occasional tangents (for example, when Akira makes the mistake of asking why she needs so many Featherman posters, and she treats him to a mini-lecture about the differences between the different series). When they finally run out of... well, _stuff_ , they just sit in silence for a while. It's close to 2:00 in the morning by this point, and Akira is starting to think about heading back to Leblanc and getting some sleep, maybe trying in the morning, Futaba says, "Why did it have to be this house, anyway?"

"What?" Akira asks.

"On the app," Futaba says. "The house is..." She shrugs and goes back to not looking at him. "I'm grateful Sojiro took me in, but sometimes I hate this house."

"Then why don't you ever leave?" Akira asks.

She mumbles something.

"Sorry?"

"Can't," Futaba says. "Can't leave, I..." She pulls her knees up to her chest and hugs them. "It's complicated, but I can't just leave." Her voice is getting quieter, still audible but only barely. "I'm going to die here someday."

"Don't say that."

She smiles, crookedly, but there's nothing but pain behind it as she tries to joke. "It's going to be my tomb," she says, with a trace of melodrama in the words. "I can't just lea--"

_"Match detected."_

Both of them jump in unison and stare at the map as the third field fills in with _tomb_. 

"What does _that_ mean?" Akira asks.

And then the world dissolves around them--he hears Futaba shriek, then jump forward and grab his forearm so tightly he's pretty sure he's going to lose feeling in it. And then they're somewhere else, somewhere bright and _hot_ , a sandy dune under a baking summer sun, with an actual Egyptian pyramid rising up in front of them.

And there's a mask resting on Akira's face in place of his glasses.

"O...kay," he says, looking around them. "Okay, so this looks a little different." A _lot_ different--the mask tells him they're not in the real world anymore, but this definitely isn't the TV World, either.

"You know where we are?" Futaba asks. "What _is_ this place?"

Akira lets out a breath, but there's really no point in trying to keep secrets now. "Kind of?"

She grips his arm tighter. " _Explain_ ," she tells him.

"Right," Akira says. "Everything. Uh..." There's a _lot_ of everything to explain, and basically no point trying to pretend everything is normal after this.

So he gives her the condensed version. It still takes a while, and Futaba has a lot of surprisingly technical questions (the first time she mentions the term _cognitive psience,_ Akira almost goes cross eyed trying to keep up with her). But eventually he gets through everything relevant.

(And some other things that are probably slightly less relevant. It's hard to tell her what happened in Inaba without explaining Yu and the Dojimas)

(He does at least leave out the Velvet Room. He's... ashamed, in a way, that he hadn't been able to help Lavenza, and that he'd screwed up badly enough to warrant a Velvet Prison)

"This is..." Futaba lets out a breath and says. "We're going to have to come back here. I'm going to have a lot more questions to ask you after I think of them." She yawns, and Akira can't stop himself from doing the same. What time is it in the real world? Three in the morning? Four?

"Yea," he says. "I want to know more about this pyramid thing too. It doesn't look anything like the TV World." 

Futaba hesitates. "Promise," she says, and then pauses again. "Promise you won't come back without me?"

"Sure," Akira says. "It's a deal." And they shake on it.

As they do--just for a second--time seems to freeze, and Akira hears something. A voice.

 _I am thou..._ _Thou art I..._

_Thou hast acquired a new vow._

_It shall become the wings of rebellion that breaketh thy chains of captivity._

_With the birth of the Hermit Persona, you have obtained the winds of blessing that shall lied to freedom and new power..._

"Lavenza," Akira whispers.

"What?" Futaba says.

"It's..." He can't bring himself to say that it's nothing, because it's not. that's Lavenza's voice. Instead he just shrugs, grinning like an idiot.

"Okay," Futaba says. "Sure." She pulls out of his grip, and pulls out his phone. "It looks like we can use this to get..." She pokes at the screen, and all at once the pyramid morphs back into Futaba's bedroom. "Home," she finishes, then hands Akira the phone and steps back again to give herself space.

"And look at that," Akira says. "Technically you just left the house."

"I don't think that counts," Futaba tells him, and gives her bedroom door such a nervous look that Akira decides not to push it.

"Okay," he says. "Well--" A glance at his new phone. "It's 3:30 and I have school today, so... I'll see you after that?" 

"I'll keep a window open," Futaba says, and Akira takes that as his cue to climb back out and make a run back to the cafe.

So.

Now he has a phone, an _app_ that gets him into... not the TV World but something pretty close to it, a clue that Lavenza might not be _quite_ as gone as he'd been afraid she was, and...

His phone buzzes with an incoming text message.

And maybe a friend.

He heads up to his room, collapses on the bed, and manages a solid three hours of sleep before his alarm goes off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to address one thing quickly--in the game, Morgana makes a big deal out of how Futaba coming into her own Palace Bad News and that's going to destabilize everything, I guess? But then the Palace hangs on just fine until she awakens her Persona, fights cognitive Wakaba, and has a touching moment with the rest of the team.
> 
> I guess what I'm saying is that if the game can hold off on destroying the Palace until an appropriately dramatic moment, _so can I_.


	4. April 12 - April 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uggggh Akechi why are you so hard to write xD

_April 12_

_Lunchtime_

-//-

Akira's phone buzzes more or less constantly throughout the morning, and it's not until lunchtime when he pulls it out and sees that the reason is because he's been getting texts from an unknown number intermittently since about 10:00. He gets up to stretch his legs while he reads them, and hopefully to get a little privacy without any chance of his classmates reading over his shoulder

**Alibaba**

> I just woke up
> 
> I wanted to check and see if you also remembered coming over last night and finding an Egyptian pyramid through an app on your phone
> 
> If not, just ignore this
> 
> Oh hey look, the app's on my phone now too
> 
> Maybe because I had it with me when we went in?
> 
> Akira, are you even reading this?
> 
> ...Futaba? 
> 
> Yes! Who else would it be? >:(
> 
> Sorry. Your name's showing up as Alibaba on my phone for some reason
> 
> Yea. It's the name I use when I'm hacking
> 
> It's just
> 
> Easier
> 
> Okay
> 
> But also yes, I do remember finding a pyramid through an app on my phone
> 
> Are we going back after you get home from school today?
> 
> Maybe tomorrow?
> 
> :(
> 
> If this is like the TV World, there's going to be Shadows. I want to make sure we have enough equipment to get through safely
> 
> Fiiiiine

Akira stuffs his phone back into his pocket and heads back to his classroom, trying to think how he's going to get any decent healing items with the very small amount of money he has with him. Maybe he'll get lucky, and Sojiro's curry will have some kind of healing? He'd eaten weirder things in elementary school. He'd kind of like to talk to Yusuke about this too, even if he already knows he's going to have to move slowly with introducing anyone new to Futaba. Maybe--especially if Madarame's still hanging around keeping him from finding a way to talk to Yusuke--he can kind of try and introduce the idea slowly before introducing Yusuke himself. He's still strategizing when he gets back into his classroom and realizes someone is sitting in his desk.

And then a second later he recognizes Ryuji, who is currently leaning forward to whisper intensely with Ann. Akira hesitates, not wanting to interrupt, but Ann notices him before he can back out of the room or find somewhere else to sit, so he heads over to join them, taking an empty seat next to his desk and nodding hello to both of them.

"Hey," Ryuji says, easing back a little to sit sort of normally in Akira's desk. "I heard the rumors that are going around about you. Sorry, man."

"Oh yea," Akira says vaguely. "You mean about me and Ann?"

Ryuji and Ann exchange a quick look.

"You haven't heard _today's_ rumors, then?" Ann asks.

He's been struggling just to stay awake after last night's adventures. He'd barely been conscious enough to listen to the teachers, much less what his classmates are saying. "People had time to come up with _new_ rumors about me?" he asks. "It's my second day here."

"Yea," Ryuji says. "Shujin's rumor mill works fast."

"Do I want to know what they're saying?" Akira asks, tentatively.

Ann rolls her eyes. "Apparently you're some kind of delinquent here on probation," she says. From her tone, she obviously thinks this is ridiculous.

"Ah," Akira says.

"It doesn't matter what anyone else is saying," Ann assures him, in the businesslike tone of someone that has been the subject of some rumors rumors of her own, and is maybe trying a little too hard to convince herself they don't mean anything. "It's not true, that's what matters."

Akira is too busy thinking _how did anyone find out_ to come up with a good way to answer this.

Ryuji notices first. "Wait," he says. "You're not _actually_ here on probation, are you?"

"Well," Akira says. "Kind of."

"Kind of?" Ann says.

"Yes," Akira admits.

There's a horrible silence between the three of them.

"I wasn't trying to hurt anyone," Akira says at last. "I _didn't_ hurt anyone. The guy I was accused of assaulting was trying to force a woman into his car with him. He was drunk, and when I shouted at him to stop, he fell on his own face. He accused me, the woman testified against me..." He trails off, not wanting to go into any more detail than he already has. The things that happened to him between his arrest and his release are not... not things he wants to share.

He's going back there in his dreams, on those nights when he's not dreaming about the Velvet Room. He's not willing to spend any more time than he has to _talking_ about it.

And then Ryuji leans back in his chair--Akira's chair, technically, he still hasn't moved seats--and says, "Sucks, man."

Akira's eyes snap up to his face, because this is not the reaction he usually gets when he tells people his version of the story of his arrest. "What?" he asks.

"You think people ever give someone like me a fair chance?" Ryuji asks.

"You think anyone sees me as more than just a face?" Ann adds, voice barely audible. "Or Kamoshida's _girlfriend_?"

Akira looks at both of them, and for a second doesn't even know what to say. 

Ryuji barrels through the awkward moment of silence. "He's probably the one that started the rumors about you," he tells Akira.

"Who," Akira says. "Kamoshida?"

Ryuji shrugs. "Probably," he says. "Yea. Because--you know. The rumors about you and Ann yesterday."

"But he's a teacher," Akira says. 

"So?" Ryuji asks.

 _So_ , there are a lot of things wrong with that. "First of all," Akira says. "He's not _dating_ Ann." He's known her two days and that's blatantly obvious already. Her face does this _thing_ whenever his name comes up that makes her feelings extremely clear.

Well, extremely clear to anyone that bothers to pay attention. To anyone that bothers to look at her and _see more than just a face_.

"Second," Akira says. "He's like... ten years older than her. He shouldn't care about any weird... dating rumors."

"Twelve years," Ann corrects, and her face does the thing again.

Okay, gross. Akira pushes on anyway. "And third," he says. "Why would a teacher want to spread my record around?"

"Because he's got a huge ego," Ann says.

"And apparently he _literally_ thinks he's the king of Shujin," Ryuji says. He winces. "Ow! Ann..."

"Sorry," she says sweetly. "I didn't mean to kick you. So hard."

"So he's telling everyone in school that I have a criminal record because he's a jerk," Akira says. "And because he thinks me and Ann are..." 

"Probably," Ryuji says.

"And _he_ wants to... with Ann?"

Ann nods.

This time, the silence between the three of them doesn't feel awkward the way it had before. It feels like they're all on the same side. They're all angry about something they have no chance at all of changing, and there's a kind of bond in that.

"Honestly," Ryuji says after a minute or so. "I'm a little surprised he didn't start spreading rumors before you even got here. Just for fun."

"This school is..." Akira shakes his head. "It is something else." And now he's going to spend his year here as the delinquent kid, because a gross teacher decided it would be fun to ruin his life.

"You could always try coming up with a _more_ dramatic rumor," Ann says, with half a smile. "That'd distract people."

Akira groans and slouches in his chair, rubbing at his face. "There's a video online from that time I was twelve and danced at an idol concert, would that be dramatic enough?"

After a beat, Ann says, "You what?"

-//-

_April 12_

_After School_

-//-

Naoto is surprised but not exactly shocked when she gets a call from Akechi the day after she'd met with him to see if he could help find Akira. It's been less than twenty four hours, but he has a reputation for being clever and resourceful. It's more than possible that he could have found a lead in a single day.

A school day, too, Naoto reminds herself. Akechi's still in high school. If he's found a lead, like he'd claimed on the phone, he'd managed to do so around his class schedule. Naoto is impressed by this, despite herself.

She's also vaguely annoyed that he'd insisted on meeting up to eat before he'll tell her anything, but he's the one with the information, and so here she is. Sitting in a mostly empty shop, watching sushi roll past on a conveyor belt and waiting for Akechi to arrive.

He eventually does, walking in through the shop's door exactly on time.

"Good afternoon," he says, greeting Naoto politely as he takes the seat next to her. "I hope you haven't been waiting long."

"Not at all," Naoto tells him. She's never had a hard time staying professional, no matter how personal the circumstances are. This meeting is no different, which is good because--if she has any sense at all for Adachi's slight tendency toward keeping himself the center of attention--he'd probably drag this out much longer than he needs to. "I've only been here about five minutes."

"I'm sorry for making you wait, in any case," Akechi says, and the accompanying smile is so... it's so note perfect that it can't possibly be anything but fake. Trying to hard to impress her, Naoto thinks, which is funny because all he'd need to do _that_ is give her the information he claims to have about Akira.

"It wasn't a problem," Naoto says. "Did you learn anything?"

-//-

Akechi lets his gaze drop to his fingers where they rest on the table, keeping his smile in place as he considers again whether to hand over the address of her person of interest. Akira Kurusu. A year younger than Akechi himself, an apparently uninteresting second year high school student from a small town he's never heard of. Orphaned six years ago, a fact he had somehow managed to hide successfully until his assault charge in April.

Akechi had learned all this not in the last twenty four hours, since Naoto had come to him to ask for a favor, but several days earlier when the rumor of him had floated down the ranks of Shido's organization. Akechi had not been directly involved in anything that happened to Kurusu, but he'd made a mental note of the name. 

He does that a lot. Listens, and remembers, and sometimes--when the time is right--he uses what he knows. 

How much, he wonders, will the information that a detective prodigy Naoto Shirogane is looking into Kurusu be worth to Shido? It will be worth something, at least, and Akechi has done more dangerous things for smaller gains in reputation.

"Well?" Naoto says, and Akechi raises his eyes back up to her, still thinking behind his smile. He can report Naoto to Shido now, yes, but it will be _much_ more valuable information if she actually gets to Kurusu first. Kurusu is a threat to Shiro, and Naoto is aiding and abetting said threat. Once she reaches out to him, Akechi can report this, claim a total lack of involvement, and be praised for catching this before anything could happen.

He's sure Naoto won't rat him out. She's too much of a decent person for that.

"It's not something I heard officially," Akechi says, dropping his voice conspiratorially. 

"I won't mention your name to anyone that could get you into trouble," Naoto assures him. 

"Then yes," Akechi says. "I have something for you." He opens his briefcase and pulls out a half sheet of paper. "It's not much," he says. "But this is the name of his school." He slides the paper across the counter to Naoto, who takes it and reads the name written there. "Normally I'd apologize for not being able to find any more details, but with your reputation, I'm sure you can find him from that."

-//-

It's the things like that, Naoto thinks, that rub her the wrong way when she's talking to Akechi. Attempts at flattery that are just a _little_ too over the top. A smile that's just a _little_ too well practiced. Sometimes, talking to him feels like talking to a carefully crafted shell dropped over a human being.

But he'd come through, and found more information in a day than Naoto has been able to track down in two weeks. "Thank you," she says, standing up. "I owe you a favor."

He murmurs something appropriately polite, but Naoto's pretty sure he's not the kind of person that forgets when someone owes him. He's smart and pragmatic behind his overly friendly facade. He'll remember, and he'll call the favor in someday.

Whatever the price for this ends up being, though, it'll be worth it. Akira's part of Yu's family, he's fought Shadows with them, and now he's facing false charges on his own. Naoto's willing to owe quite a lot of favors to make sure he knows he's safe.

"Thank you for the help," she tells Akechi, standing. "It looks like I have work to do."

Akechi nods, but looks perfectly happy to stay for dinner, and makes no move to get up. "I look forward to working with you in the future," he tells her.

"And you as well," Naoto says, before ducking out of the still mostly empty shop. She has her phone out before she gets to the door, dialing Yu's number as she walks. 

He picks up almost immediately, which doesn't surprise her. They'd talked yesterday before she asked Akechi for help. He'll be hoping for good news, and Naoto is happy to have some good to give him.

"I got the name of his school," Naoto says. 

"Just like that?" Yu says.

"I might owe Akechi a favor or two," Naoto admits. "But yes." She shrugs, although she knows he can't see her. "I have to admit, he came through."

"Sounds like it," Yu says. "Can you text me the school's name? I'll look up the address and stop by tomorrow afternoon--maybe get lucky and catch him on his way out after class."

"I'll meet you there," Naoto says, without waiting to be invited--she's not going to be be left behind at _this_ point.

-//-

_April 13_

_After School_

-//-

The next day at school drags.

It's not exactly a revelation that _oh yes school can occasionally be boring,_ but Akira has forgotten exactly how long it can feel when he's planning a trip into the TV World as soon as the last bell rings.

Well--not the TV World, actually, even if the supernatural feel to the place and Akira's mask both make it seem pretty similar. There's no TV, as Futaba had pointed out yesterday while they were texting about their pyramid exploration plans. They had mutually agreed that both Phone World and App World were terrible names, and since the app in question is called the Metaverse Navigator, metaverse seems like the most logical name.

And anyway, he remembers Lavenza using that word a few times back in Inaba. More confirmation that what's happening here is _definitely_ connected to what happened back in Inaba.

So here he is, sitting through a school day that feels like it's lasted at least a year already, impatient to get back to Yongen-Jaya and make their first non-middle-of-the-night trip to that Pyramid with Futaba. It feels almost impossible to focus on anything he's supposed to be learning. When the end of the day finally _does_ come, he's swings his bag over his shoulder and slips through the crowd of classmates out to the hallway with a feeling of intense gratitude. A few people whisper as he passes them, and there's more staring than he's really comfortable with, but for right now at least he has too many other things on his mind to think about how the school's volleyball coach had leaked his arrest record to the rest of the school.

Ryuji's standing in the hallway just outside the door, and Akira waves at him on his way past.

"Is Ann on her way out?" Ryuji calls, and Akira hesitates, then stops in his beeline toward the stairs. There are exactly two people in this school that have made any effort to be friendly to him, and he's not in so much of a rush to leave that he's just going to ignore that.

"I think so," he says. "I saw her getting her bag together when I left." 

Perfectly on cue, Ann comes out of the classroom, and almost immediately spots them. "Ready to go?" she asks Ryuji.

"Yea," he says. "I think I got everything."

"You guys have plans?" Akira asks. They fall into step together, working their way through the crowd toward the stairs.

"Not really," Ann says, after a second. "We were just, uh..." 

She obviously hasn't thought of anything good to say by the time she gets to the end of the sentence, because she just trails off into silence, looking slightly embarrassed.

Akira's getting the distinct impression that whatever they're planning to do after school, they don't want him coming with them. Which is completely reasonable, they've known each other all of two days, and also he has plans of his own for today that he's not exactly sharing with _them_. So he asks what he needs to see while he's in Tokyo for the year, both of them leap at the fairly obvious subject change, and they spend a couple of minutes arguing over which parts of the city are 'too tuoristy' and whether Ryuji's favorite ramen shop is somewhere Akira actually _needs_ to visit.

The halls get more crowded as they get to the first floor, and there are plenty of other people swarming around when they reach the street--which is why Akira doesn't notice the two people waiting for him outside until it's too late.

"Akira," someone says from far too close to him, and he startles, eyes snapping to--

He only realizes he's stopped dead in his tracks when Ryuji steps on his ankles.

"You shouldn't be here," he tells Yu, because... because he's _shouldn't_. Akira had sat in that interrogation room, and he'd listened to the things the police had to say about _him_ , and then he'd listened to those oh-so-casual mentions of what the Dojimas might have figured out while he was with them. How much trouble they might get into if they'd reached certain (correct) conclusions.

Which they had. And which Akira absolutely does not want them to get into any trouble for. There's a reason he hasn't even tried to get in contact with anyone since the day he left for Tokyo, and it's definitely not because he _doesn't_ miss them.

"How did you even know where to find me?" he asks.

Yu inclines his head slightly to one side, and Akira's eyes dart in that direction, to Naoto. "She found you," Yu says.

So maybe Akira really should have seen that one coming.

Naoto raises her eyebrows, as if asking if he really thought they wouldn't look for him, if he _really_ thought he'd be able to hide for long. Suddenly he feels twelve years old again, back in front of his elementary school and walking out to be ambushed by a detective that shouldn't know to call him Trickster. "Right," Akira mutters, turning a little away from both of them. "Of course she did."

He's angry. He realizes this as if from very far away, and it surprises him. He's _angry_ that he's resigned himself to losing the people that matter to him, that he'd said goodbye and made up his mind to just... _deal_ with the loneliness and the nightmares, because he's in trouble already and he doesn't want to drag anyone else down with him. He's angry that he's cut himself off to protect the Dojimas and protect Yu, and that Yu had ignored that come looking for him anyway, that they're ignoring what Akria has put himself through and come here anyway.

And he's angry that, if Yu and Naoto were going to come looking for him, that they'd be careless enough to meet him right in front of the school like this, where anyone could see.

"I left something in the classroom," he says, taking a jerky couple of steps back. 

"You okay man?" Ryuji asks, as Akira almost stumbles over him.

"Fine," he lies, still moving.

" _Akira_ ," Yu says.

"I'm serious," Akira says. "You shouldn't be here, okay?"

And then without waiting for his answer (because he _knows_ Yu is going to argue), he breaks away from the little cluster of people blocking the sidewalk, and heads back into Shujin. Yu and Naoto, he's pretty sure, won't try to follow him inside. They'd stick out as obviously too old to be students and too young to be teachers, and... well, all he has to do is hang out here until they get bored of waiting on the street outside and leave.

 _Stupid_ , a part of him whispers. _Stupid, you could have asked him for help. You could have talked to him about Igor. Stupid, you_ want _him here._

But he buries that thought, because whatever else is going on, Yu _can't_ be around him. It'll get Yu in trouble, and do horrible things to Akira's probation. This is... it's not going to happen.

It's not fair, but it _can't_ happen.

Akira texts Futaba that something's come up and he's going to be later than he thought, and then puts his phone away and doesn't look at her answer. He doesn't know what he's going to tell her if she asks what's holding him up, and wants to put off thinking about it until he at least gets home.

Yu and Naoto haven't followed him in, and neither have Ryuji or Ann. Good. Akira doesn't know what he'd say to either of them, if they had.

He loiters around the school for a little while, as it slowly empties itself of students. The ones that are still here--the ones that had stayed for clubs or to study--have disappeared into classrooms or the gym, and there are only a few stragglers left with Akira. He's getting weird looks, and he's just starting to think it might be safe to leave when a girl he doesn't know approaches him.

"Hi," she says. "Sorry for just..." She gives him a slightly nervous smile. There's an ugly purple bruise around one eye, and a brace on her leg--she looks tired, too. "Sorry for just coming up to you out of nowhere, but I wanted to ask if you've seen Ann anywhere?"

"Um," Akira says. He's only vaguely aware of the question, but she's looking at him with clear expectation of an answer, so he tries to force himself to focus.

"I thought I saw you heading out with her earlier," the girl says, and her smile gets very slightly less nervous. "I'm Shiho--Ann's a friend of mine, and... honestly I've been having a hard time getting hold of her the past couple days." She holds up her cell phone, as if in explanation, and Akira gets a half glimpse of a string of outgoing text messages on the screen, with none coming back in. "I don't know what she's been busy with or where she's been that doesn't have any service," she says. "But I was hoping to talk--" She cuts herself off, shaking her head. "Never mind. Have you seen her?"

"I saw her leaving earlier," Akira says. "But I don't know where she was headed." He decides not to mention why he hadn't stuck around long enough to see where Ann had been planning to go with Ryuji. "Sorry."

Shiho looks disappointed for a second, but hides it quickly. "I'm sure it'll work out," she says. "Thanks. I'm..." She points vaguely down the hallway. "I need to get to volleyball practice." She waves, and heads off down the hall toward the gym.

It might just be his imagination, but it sort of looks like she's limping. 

Akira checks the time on his phone--and sees that there are three messages from Futaba, increasingly impatient, asking when he's going to get home already. It's probably been long enough for Yu and Naoto to give up waiting.

Well. It's _hopefully_ been long enough. 

Just to be safe, he waits by the door until a crowd of first years heads out, talking loudly about some weekend plans, then walks out just behind them, using the group as cover. There's no sign of Yu or Naoto still waiting, but he doesn't relax until he's actually on the train heading away from Shujin.

-//-

_April 13_

_After School_

-//-

Ann's fully aware that she and Ryuji are procrastinating when they stop for food at a Big Bang Burger barely five minutes' walk from school. But Ryuji had mentioned he was hungry, and Ann kind of wants to go over the plan one more time before they do anything else, and so here they are, _not_ investigating the creepy castle apparently ruled over by a mostly naked and entirely creepy Kamoshida.

Mostly they've just been talking about Akira instead of the castle, though.

"Who do you think those guys were?" Ryuji asks, not for the first time.

"I still don't know," Ann says, and then immediately regrets the way it comes out sounding slightly testy. "Sorry," she says, and then tries to think it over a little bit more. "I mean, obviously someone Akira knows. Maybe someone from..." She waves a hand vaguely. "From wherever he was before he came here?"

"Guess so," Ryuji mutters. "But it sounds like he lived like--way out in the sticks somewhere. It'd be pretty creepy for someone to follow him here from there."

"Yea," Ann admits. "And he really didn't seem to want those two around."

They're both quiet for a couple of minutes. They'd ordered food, but neither of them is really eating anymore. Ryuji _had_ gotten most of his burger down before they started talking, but now he's just fiddling with the bits he hadn't eaten, pulling the bun apart without seeming to notice he's doing it. Ann's barely touched hers, and she just stares at it now. 

"More crappy adults," Ryuji mutters at last.

"They weren't _that_ old," Ann says, although she's not exactly sure why she's trying to defend them. "College, maybe."

"Close enough," Ryuji says. "I mean, they're following Akira around and obviously making him feel like shit. Dunno what else to call that."

He looks down at his hands, realizes he's shredded the rest of his food, and drops the scraps with a scowl. "Anyway," he says. "Speaking of shitty adults..."

"Kamoshida," Ann finishes. That's the reason they've met up today, after all. Two days ago they'd wandered into a castle where their school should be. They'd been actually attacked there by Kamoshida, and only gotten away by sheer _luck_. Ann had seen people coming at them with actual weapons, and she'd grabbed Ryuji and run with him back out of the castle while he was still trying to figure out what was going on.

Call it self preservation, or instinct, or whatever, but Ann is a reasonably attractive sixteen year old girl, and she knows that the correct response to an adult man coming at her wearing nothing but tight pink underwear and some kind of cape is to leave as quickly as possible. 

To be fair to Ryuji, though, he's the one that had figured out the app, and used it to get them back away from the castle. It's on both their phones now, not just his--some kind of possibly supernatural navigation app that takes them between normal Tokyo, and a world where Kamoshida is allowed to be a king.

"We're going back today," Ryuji says. "Right?"

Ann raises her eyebrows at him--he'd wanted to go back in yesterday, but she'd insisted on taking the day off to get supplies in case they run into more of those guards, if they have to fight or something. Bandages and painkillers mostly. She's not _sure_ if it'll be enough, but she's hoping. She'd also been hoping that the extra day would give them more time to figure out... well, _anything_. But so far they're still completely clueless. Even when Ryuji had dropped some pretty heavy handed hints in front of Kamoshida during gym class, it was almost like he didn't even know what they were talking about.

Kamoshida won't admit anything, neither Ann nor Ryuji has any proof of what they'd seen, and the only next step she can think of is to let the app take them back to the castle and figure out what to do from there.

"I think so," Ann says. "I got some supplies yesterday after school. I think we're probably as ready as we're going to get."

"Cool," Ryuji says, sitting straight up out of his slouch. "I got some stuff too."

"What kind of stuff?" Ann asks.

He shrugs. "A bunch of sodas and energy drinks, mostly."

"Energy drinks," Ann repeats.

"Because we were so tired after we got out of there last time," Ryuji says. "So--energy drinks." He makes a face. "Except most of the drink machines around here only have sodas, so I got some of those too."

"Well I'm sure they won't _hurt_ ," Ann says, after a pause where she tries to think of something polite to say. At least he's trying.

"Oh!" Ryuji adds. "And I got this."

And he pulls _an actual gun_ out of his schoolbag.

"Ryuji!" Ann hisses, and half lunges across the table to cover the little black shape with both hands. "Why did you bring that here? Where did you even _get_ it?"

"It's not a real gun, Ann!"

"Shh!"

"It's not _real_ ," Ryuji repeats, more quietly. "I got it from that Airsoft Shop on Central Street. I figured, those guards only seemed like they had swords or whatever. Maybe we can use this to scare them off, right?"

"I don't know," Ann says, wishing he'd just get it out of sight already. " _Maybe_ , but at least put it away until we get there, okay?" 

He grumbles a little but actually does shove it back into his bag. Ann eyes the other people in the Big Bang Burger to see if anyone's noticed them, but luckily, no one seems to be giving the two of them a second look.

"Thank you," she says, breathing a little sigh of relief as she stands up. She still hasn't eaten anything, but honestly she doesn't really think she could manage a single bite right now. "Maybe we should get going." Before Ryuji pulls out anything else that might get them kicked out of here.

"For sure!" Ryuji says, and both of them hurry back out onto the street.

The app shows an error when they try to use it to navigate back to the castle--too far from destination, apparently. Ann suggests they go back by the school to where they'd been the first time they saw the castle, and when they try that the app works on the first try.

And then there they are.

"Let's go," Ryuji says, and leads the way inside.

-//-

_April 13_

_After School_

-//-

Akira makes it to the Sakura house--finally--and after stopping by the cafe to change out of his school clothes (there is _no_ reason to go into even a fake desert wearing a blazer) he pulls out his phone to text Futaba.

> **Alibaba**
> 
> Do you want me to come in through the window again?
> 
> Sojiro's still at the cafe
> 
> You could just use the front door
> 
> Weird
> 
> ?
> 
> I don't think I've ever visited a friend in Tokyo and NOT had to climb in through a window
> 
> :D
> 
> In that case we don't need to break the streak :p
> 
> btw, what held you up at school that made you so late?

Akira puts the phone away without answering this question, and skulks around the street for a while until it's relatively empty, and clear to slip in through the gate. Futaba's window is open, and she spins around in her chair to look at him when he joins her inside the room. She looks a little less nervous than she had during his last midnight visit here, which is probably a good sign.

"Ready?" she asks, phone already out and balanced on the palm of her hand.

"Hang on," Akira says, and Futaba pauses with her finger poised over the screen. "I just--think we should talk about what to expect when we get there. Just in case." He takes a deep breath. "So I told you about the TV World last time we went there, and Shadows and everything."

He waits a beat for Futaba to nod.

"And Shadows can be dangerous," Akira goes on. "I'm _really_ hoping we won't see anything I can't fight by myself, but I'm not as strong as--" It's unexpectedly hard to talk about Yu after seeing him at school today. "The other people back in Inaba. But we really don't know what we're walking into, the police confiscated my weapons when I was arrested, and I couldn't afford that many healing items." He's hoping to get more today, or at least the money to buy more later, but he doesn't feel entirely confident assuming the metaverse will work the same as the TV World. "So what I'm saying is... I just really need you to be careful while we're in there."

"Okay," Futaba says.

"And I have a friend in Tokyo that has a Persona," Akira goes on. "If he came with us, we'd have twice as much fighting power."

Futaba shrinks back a little at this suggestion. "Maybe--" She looks away from him, back down at her phone. "Maybe next time."

It's the answer Akira had sort of expected, and since he hasn't been able to talk to Yusuke since coming to Tokyo anyway, he lets it pass for now. "Okay," he says. "I just... want you to think about it."

"Okay," she says. " _Now_ can we go?"

Akira nods, and stands up just before Futaba hits the navigate button on her phone. The same feeling of disorientation he remembers from last time hits him, as the solid ground under his feet seems to stretch and contort before solidifying again into warm sand.

It's in his shoes immediately.

"Okay," he says, and feels the weight of his mask against his face as he speaks. "I guess now we go in."

And so in they go, Akira out in front and Futaba sticking close behind, taking everything in as they walk. Akira's doing pretty much the same thing, actually--the inside of the pyramid is much more elaborate than anything he'd ever seen in Inaba, and it seems more _real_ , in a way. Not realistic, exactly, because it's not like there's random bits of floating code in Egyptian pyramids, but... solid. Everything in the TV World had felt impermanent and changeable, with the layouts of places shifting entirely between trips. This doesn't have that same feeling.

They move carefully through a kind of foyer, than across a gap bridged only by broken pieces of stone. Akira makes the jumps easily, but Futaba has shorter legs and is entirely unathletic--she makes the first jump, stumbles hard on the second, and after that Akira waits for her on edge ledge, heart in his mouth but ready to catch her just in case.

There are no more slips, but he's still relieved when they're back on solid ground, in a kind of foyer section below a set of stairs leading up to a rocky outcrop a little higher than head height.

"You did not mention there would be exercise," Futaba says, voice just shaky enough to tell Akira she'd been rattled. Just strong enough, too, to tell him that she's coping and he should not ask. 

"I said there would be fighting," Akira points out. He leans against the wall as if taking a break, waiting for the slight tremor in her voice to fade. 

"Uh," Futaba says. "You said _you_ would be fighting. You didn't say _I_ would be _jumping_."

"Okay," Akira admits. "I didn't know there would be jumping. Everything about this place is more..." He waves an arm vaguely, encompassing everything they've seen so far. "Developed? It's more developed than anything I've seen before." The explanation seems like it's giving Futaba something to focus on--her eyes are sharp on his face, and the trembling that had started after her fall is slowing down, so Akira keeps going. "It doesn't exactly look like something that would exist in real life--"

"No _kidding_ ," Futaba snorts.

"But there's all these little details," Akira says. "The pyramid is... it's worn down. The stones." He puts a hand on the wall he's leaning against, feeling the rough texture under his fingers, and the chill that comes through it so strongly they could have been air conditioned. "They look like they were built up and then eroded, like rocks in the real world. In the TV World, everything felt like--like a set. Kind of two dimensional." He points up. "You could see TV cameras whenever you looked up."

Futaba looks up too. There's no sign of cameras here, just more stone stretching overhead.

"This place is different," she says. Calmer now. "Right?"

"Yea." So maybe he doesn't know as much about what they're about to run into as he feels like he should.

He wishes so badly it hurts that Lavenza was here. To be a guide through all this, but also to be his friend. But she's gone, just a voice and the echo of a scream that he thinks would wake him up at night if he wasn't _already_ having nightmares about his arrest and about the Velvet Room.

He makes a mental note to keep talking up Yusuke to Futaba, at least. Lavenza is... gone hopefully not forever, but gone at least somewhere that he can't follow. Futaba can't fight, and Akira would really like someone else with a Persona around.

"I wonder why it changed," Futaba says thoughtfully, and looks around. When her gaze lands on a staircase just behind her, she turns and starts walking up. Akira scrambles after her, not wanting to let her get too far ahead of him in case of Shadows or traps or any more crumbling architecture.

"Futaba," he calls, trying not to be too loud. "Wait up--"

He comes to the top of the stairs and stops, just barely managing to avoid running into Futaba. She's stopped, staring at the same thing that Akira is--at a dimly glowing figure with yellow eyes at the base of another ( _much_ longer) set of stairs, leading upward. Even dressed in some kind of gauzy, Egyptian-ish outfit, he can tell from here that it (she?) looks exactly like Futaba. A Shadow, he knows even before he's close enough to see the yellow eyes.

"You shouldn't be here," Shadow-Futaba says, and from the pointed direction of her gaze behind the decidedly un-ancient glasses, it's clear that _you_ means _Akira_ and not _both of you_. Akira, who has seen how dangerous and violent Shadows can be, stops where he is and holds his arms up in a gesture showing he doesn't mean to start fighting.

On the other hand, this Shadow seems as different from the ones Akira has seen before, as the Pyramid is from the TV World. Other Shadows had been creepily identical to the people they imitated, and had made a point of insulting whatever the person's weak point is. This one is just watching them with... maybe a hint of wariness.

"Things have been wrong here for a long time," Shadow-Futaba says, and Akira shares a quick, anxious look with the real Futaba for just a second, before both of them look back at the Shadow. "Distorted," Shadow-Futaba says, when neither of them says anything. "Your memories are distorted."

Akira has no idea what that means, but there's a flash of... something on Futaba's face that says she might. It's there and then gone so quickly that he doesn't have time to ask about it before it's been replaced with a frown.

"You're me," she says. "Aren't you? Can't you just tell me what's wrong?"

Shadow-Futaba studies her, and then seems to shimmer just before she begins to _fade_. "Everything you need to know is here," she says. "Which means that everything you need to know, you _already_ know. You just need to face it. Come and find me at the top."

And then she's gone.

As soon as she's gone, the real Futaba shudders and looks around at Akira. "That was creepy," she says.

"Yea," Akira says, staring at the place Shadow-Futaba had been standing. "I've never seen a Shadow act like that before. Usually they're more... angry."

"The things she was saying," Futaba says. "Makes me wonder how much of this place is based on--" A deep discomfort crawls across her face. "On me."

"We had to use your name to get the app to work, too," Akira says.

There's a short silence.

"Should we go upstairs?" Akira asks at last.

Futaba rallies from her discomfort a little. "It seems like the only way to keep going anyway," she says.

So up the stairs they go. Even from the bottom, Akira can tell it's going to be a long climb--the stairs stretch upward and away so far that he can't actually see the top. The Pyramid hadn't been that tall from the outside, had it?

They haven't gotten very far up the stairs at all, though, hen a gate abruptly slams shut in front of them, so close to the two of them that Akira can feel the little gust of wind from where it shuts right in front of his nose, and he jumps back, almost falling as he remembers a second too late that there's stairs and not solid ground behind him. He catches himself just in time.

"I guess we're not going straight up after all," he says, and looks around the landing where they've stopped. There's a door to their right, and another to the left. Akira picks one at random and points. "I guess we can go find out where it goes?"

Futaba nods, and they head through the door.

And _that's_ when they find the Shadows. 

Akira almost doesn't know what they are, at first. Instead of the kind of sludgy looking Shadows he's used to seeing, these look very close to being human. Well--dead humans, anyway. They patrol the halls and stairways of the Pyramid's back passages, red eyes gleaming, looking so different from what Akira is used to that he hesitates for a second before he attacks for the first time. But then one spots him, and _erupts_ outward into a pair of Shadows, and after the fight that follows, Akira feels like he has a slightly better grasp of the situation. The Pyramid is weird, the Shadows look different, everything feels slightly upside down, but Persona are the same, and Shadows still go down under the same attacks, so he knows that he can handle it.

Well. He's _pretty_ sure he can handle it. The Shadows are a little bit tougher than he was hoping for, but not impossible to deal with as long as he doesn't have to face too _many_. 

They wander through the first level of the Pyramid for about an hour and a half that afternoon, before beating a retreat back to the main stairs. He and Futaba agree it would probably be a good idea to head straight back outside and use the app to get home, but curiosity wins over common sense and they take a peek through the door they hadn't gone through. Instead of another labyrinth of Shadows, there's just one room that seems half-Pyramid and half-Futaba's-room-in-the-real-world. It shimmers and distorts until Akira goes cross eyed trying to see just one or the other. It's weird (what isn't, here?) but when he gives up and just accepts that the space is both at once, the room ends up feeling sort of comfortable. He and Futaba sit down at a table in the middle of the room, catching their breath before heading back out into the heat again.

"So," Futaba says after they've sat for a while. "That was..." She waves a vague hand.

"Do you want to come back?" Akira asks.

He's pretty sure he knows what the answer's going to be, but he wants to check. Just to make sure.

"Of course I do!" Futaba says. "I want to figure out what my Shadow's talking about, with--" And here there's a hesitation, a small stutter. "With the distortions. And I want to see what's at the top of the Pyramid."

"You don't have any idea what distortion means?" Akira asks.

"I..." She sighs. "Maybe. She talked about my memories, right? And I haven't been..." She has her phone in her hands and she pulls it out to fiddle with it. "I haven't been okay for a while. So maybe... I don't know. I want to think about it some more."

"Okay," Akira says.

"I _know_ I'm not--I haven't been okay since my mom died," Futaba says, more quietly.

"You seem okay to me," Akira says, because he hates that talking about her mom seems to be making her... shrink, almost. Her shoulders go round, and she hunches over and in on herself. 

"I'm messed up," Futaba says, without looking at him. Instead, she's staring now at her phone, looking like she wants to bore a hole through it with how hard she is not looking at Akira right now. 

"Do you want to talk about it at all?" he asks.

"No," Futaba says. She sounds very, very certain about it. "Family is--it's..."

"Hard," Akira finishes for her. "I get it."

"That sounded unexpectedly bitter," Futaba says.

"Mmm," Akira says. He doesn't really want to talk about it--Yu coming to his school after classes today is still fresh on his mind.

"Something happen?" Futaba asks. "Because we can talk about your problems instead of my problems for a while."

He gives her a look. The one she returns is _almost_ cheeky. 

Akira breaks first, but doesn't tell her much. "It's nothing," he said. "I just--you remember I told you about Yu. He showed up after school today."

"I thought you liked him," Futaba says.

"I do," Akira tells her. "But he's going to get in a lot of trouble if the wrong person sees him with me. I'd rather he just... stayed away. At least until my probation is over." After that, who knows? It feels like that's still a hundred years away, and he doesn't even know how to think about it yet.

"Hmm," Futaba says, and _thankfully_ she lets the subject drop, after that.

-//-

_April 13_

_After School_

-//-

Ann and Ryuji know to be careful, this time. Ryuji keeps forgetting, because he apparently thinks this is all some kind of big fun adventure, but Ann, at least, remembers. She has to spend more of her mental energy on making sure he's not going to do anything crazy than she really wants to, but for the first half hour or so it kind of works okay. They pass through the atrium as quickly and quietly as they possibly can. The last time they'd been here, so-called _'King Kamoshida'_ had been there, a horrible surprise that Ann still hasn't fully recovered from.

This time, they're lucky. No one's in the atrium when they get there, so they can move past it, and keep exploring. They have to be _very, very careful,_ because there are guards patrolling just about every hallway they try to go down, but it's kind of possible to make their way through the castle as long as they're careful.

Ann doesn't really think about which way they're going--it's not like she has any sense of how big this castle is or what they should be looking for--until they descend a flight of stairs and find themselves suddenly in a dungeon.

"Urgh," Ryuji says when they stop at the bottom of the stairs to take in the view. "What _is_ it with this place?"

"Shh, Ryuji," Ann scolds, but in her mind she's agreeing with him. The whole castle is creepy, but this place in particular is... _bad_. "Do you think we should keep going?" she asks. "Or... or maybe it would be better to turn around and go back."

"Do you hear that?" Ryuji asks, completely ignoring her question.

"Hear what?"

"It sounds like there's someone down here," Ryuji says, taking off. "Come on--"

"Ryuji!" Ann hisses after him, but of _course_ he doesn't come back, so after another worried glance behind them up the stairs, she hurries to catch up.

When she gets to him, she's almost sorry that she'd hurried. Ryuji stands in front of one of the dungeon's cells, staring in slack jawed amazement at the scene inside. Ann joins him, and feels her own expression firm into something hard and angry at his side. "These people," she says, watching as some kind of horrible volleyball cannon fires, again and again and again. "I know some of them. They're on the team with Shiho."

"What're they doing here?" Ryuji demands, as if Ann is supposed to have any kind of answer. When she doesn't (can't) say anything, he raises his voice and calls down to the volleyball players in the cell. "Hey!" he shouts. "Hey!"

None of them turn to look at them, but Ann grabs his arm and starts pulling. "The _guards_ , Ryuji," she reminds him. "If you start shouting like that, they'll hear us. We have to keep moving before someone comes to investigate."

He gives in, after only a minimal amount of grumbling.

They walk past more cells, more volleyball players being tortured in horrible ways. Ann takes out her phone and tries to take a picture to show to someone--the principal, their parents, _anyone_ \--later, but the camera won't even open. All they can do is keep walking, and keep looking, unable to tear their eyes away from the horrible sight.

And then they get to the only cell with something different, and find the cat.

"Oh shit," Ryuji says when he spots it. "What the heck?"

He jumps back and almost squashes Ann with the movement, which means that _she_ doesn't see the cat until after she's smacked him to the side. Then she says, " _Oh,_ shit," and only half takes in Ryuji's expansive _see, I told you!_ expression from the corner of her eye.

"Hey!" the cat thing says, putting his hands (paws?) on his hips and narrowing his eyes at them. "If you're going to stand there and stare anyway, do you think you could maybe help?"

"Whaaaa--" Ryuji stops there, apparently unable to finish the question, so Ann jumps in.

"What _are_ you?" she asks.

"Maybe we could save that for later?" the cat thing asks. "After you get me out of here?"

"Who said we were going to get you out of here?" Ryuji asks, having apparently recovered the power of speech.

"Because I've been locked up here for _ages,_ " says the thing. "And--" its already wide eyes grow wider. "And I can help you!"

"Yea, ri--"

Ann steps on Ryuji's foot. "Help us how?" she asks.

"You've seen those Shadows wandering around," it says. "Right?"

"Shadows?" Ann repeats.

"Nope," Ryuji says.

"The guards!" says the cat, almost hopping up and down in frustration. "They're called Shadows, you've seen those, right?"

"Sure," Ann says, a little uncertainly. "We've seen guards."

"You two wouldn't be able to fight them," says the cat thing. "But I can! If you're going to be wandering around in here, I can definitely help!"

"I think those guards--"

"Shadows!"

Ann still has no idea why he'd be so insistent on calling them Shadows instead of guards, but there are way more important things to be worrying about at the moment, so she doesn't press. Shadows, guards, _whatever_ they're called, all three of them will be in serious trouble if they're found here. "Okay," Ann allows. "Okay, I think those _Shadows_ are about ten times bigger than you. How are you supposed to fight that?"

It should be impossible for the cat thing to look smug. He manages it anyway, folding his stubby paws over his chest and grinning. "Why don't you let me out and I'll show you?" he asks.

"Why don't you show us, and then we'll let you out," Ann says.

"Maybe we'll let you out," Ryuji says.

"Maybe," Ann agrees. After all, they don't know anything about this thing, even if the fact that he's locked up here kind of points to an enemy-of-my-enemy kind of situation. She just doesn't want to go ahead and assume they can trust... _anything_ they meet here.

The cat thing considers, eyes narrowing in apparently intense concentration. As they wait, Ann takes in some of the details she'd been too shocked to really see at first. She's _still_ too shocked to really see everything, if she's being honest--she keeps seeing one thing (a yellow bandanna tied around his neck, the mask covering most of his bulbous head, the tool pouch around his waist) and then averting her eyes because _none of this can possibly real, definitely not, this isn't happening_.

"Okay," says the cat at last. "I'll show you. Then you can let me out, okay?"

"Maybe," Ann says again, and although the cat looks faintly annoyed, he doesn't back down from his decision. Maybe he's decided this is the best he's going to get. 

"Watch this," he says dramatically. "Prepare to have your minds completely _blown_!"

Ann glances sideways at Ryuji, and is slightly reassured to see that he looks just as skeptical as she feels.

"Persona!" the cat yells. Ann winces--apparently he's not any better at keeping quiet than Ryuji is. Then she sees the ephemeral... _whatever it is_ spring from thin air behind him, and it drives pretty much every other thought out of her head. She has no idea what the thing (the Persona?) is, but even without knowing, she can... can _feel_ the power of it, and is impressed despite herself.

A faint wind tornadoes around the cell area, tugging at Ann's hair, and she brushes a few loose strands away from her face. It's not centered on her and Ryuji, which is lucky, because she has the definite feeling it could have done some damage to them if it was. When the wind fades, she says, "Okay, that _does_ seem like it would help in fighting those guar--Shadows."

"See?" says the cat. "I told you!"

"Yea," Ann admits, then turns to talk to Ryuji. "We might as well let him out, right? That--" is not what she had been expecting. At all.

"Yea," Ryuji says, rubbing at the back of his neck and wincing self consciously. "I would feel kinda bad about just leaving anyone locked up in this place, anyway."

So would Ann, actually, and when Ryuji puts it plainly into words, she feels a little ashamed for considering leaving him in the first place. "So where's this key?"

"Up there," the cat says, jumping an impressively high amount considering how short he is. He's pointing somewhere just off to the left, out of his sight from where he's trapped inside the cell, and sure enough when Ann looks in that direction she sees a keyhook.

An _empty_ keyhook.

"There's nothing there," Ryuji says.

"Yes there is!" says the cat. "Look harder!"

"I'm looking too," Ann tells him. "There really isn't anything there."

The cat looks--for a second--absolutely gobsmacked. Then crushed. Then he rallies, a little shudder going through him as he forces himself to stand up straight and accept the bad news.

That's when Ann realizes that she very much wants to save the strange mutant cat thing living in the dungeon of Kamoshida's castle. Not just because it looks like they'll be a little safer with him around, but because she respects the way he's not letting such an obviously impossible situation get him down.

"The keys were there a couple days ago," he insists. "Maybe if you'd shown up _then_ , they still would have been here."

Maybe they would have, Ann thinks with a little twist of guilt. What if they _had_ found this cat on Monday, when they'd stumbled into the castle the first time? 

"Don't blame this on us!" Ryuji says. Obviously his mind has been running in an entirely different direction. "We didn't even know you were down here!"

"You still could have been faster--"

"Shh!" Ann hisses at the two of them. "Do you hear that?"

"What?" says the cat.

"Footsteps," Ann says. "Someone's coming, they must have heard you two shouting."

"Shit," Ryuji says. "You're right." He spins round and both he and Ann stand there mostly frozen, looking both ways and trying to figure out which direction the echoing footsteps are coming from. Which way would be safe to run to.

And then all at once, the horde of Shadow-guards is on top of them.

There's only four of them, which wouldn't be so bad if they weren't all incredibly dangerous, and if Ann wasn't entirely unarmed, Ryuji holding only a fake gun, and the cat locked up in a jail cell.

And if Kamoshida hadn't come sweeping down after his guards to join them, somehow managing to seem just as dangerous in his underwear as the Shadows are in their armor.

The funny thing is that none of the things Kamoshida says to Ann there in his gross volleyball torture dungeon are really any worse than the things he says to her at school. They're more... _honest_ , maybe. A little bit more blunt. He's traded loaded comments about Shiho losing her position on the team (unless Ann would be willing to trade something... equally valuable), for a straight proposition for sex.

Ryuji is shocked. The cat looks outraged. Ann is only vaguely surprised that he's being so blunt about it--but then again, it _would_ make sense that she's the only one here that would have heard anything like this from Kamoshida before.

It's not until he tries to touch her that she feels the first stirrings of anger.

He's done that before--a hand on her arm to get her attention, a not so casual tug on her hair, always _just_ innocent enough that he could have denied it if Ann had tried to say anything. This is different, there's an _intention_ in his eyes and in his reaching hand that makes Ann's blood run cold. She shudders and freezes, and it's not with fear or disgust but with that unexpected, red hot flash of _anger_.

Is she really going to stand here, in this place, in this... this shrine to Kamoshida, and _take_ what he's trying to do to her?

She takes a step forward, and anger crystalizes in one red hot moment into a stabbing, burning pain that seems to come from somewhere so deep inside her that it feels like she's going to crumble into ashes from the inside out.

A voice speaks--Ann hears it and doesn't, doubled over in pain, clutching at something hard and smooth across her face. Her ears are buzzing with a heady mix of fear and anger and pain, too loud for her to actually hear any words. But she feels them, written across her innermost being like a contract burned into her soul. She understands intrinsically what she is being asked, and responds in the only way that feels natural.

She wraps the fingers of both hands around the hard thing on her face, and peels it away, pulling it from her skin in a shower of blood that brings a fresh blossom of pain, and a sudden and _blinding_ clarity of what she has to--what she _can_ do next.

"Carmen!" she shouts, and Carmen _comes_.

The burst of flames drives Kamoshida and his guards away. Ann watches him turn (watches the look of fear on his face) and smiles beneath her mask.

"Guards!" Kamoshida calls. His voice echoes as he retreats toward the stairs, and it might just be Ann's imagination but it sounds a little more high pitched than usual. "Guards, stop the intruders!"

"What the heck, Ann!" Ryuji says, but he sounds way more excited than he does angry. "How did you _do_ that?"

"I don't--"

"You have a Persona too!" the cat says.

"I..."

As both of them continue to chatter at more or less the same time, a wave of exhaustion crashes suddenly down over her. Ann sways on her feet, putting a hand out to the bar of the cat's cell to steady herself.

Ryuji grabs her elbow to steady her, and Ann lets him hang on for a second before she shakes him off. He's so much less threatening than Kamoshida, just in the way he gives her _space_ while he does it, that it's hard to be upset about it.

"You okay?" Ryuji asks.

"Yea," Ann says. "No."

"You'll be tired for a little while," the cat tells Ann. "Awakening a Persona can take a lot out of you."

"Um," Ann says. She can feel it already, a creeping tiredness that threatens blackness on the edges of her vision. "Yea."

And that's when she passes out.

-//-

"Oh shit," Ryuji says, and kind of half fumbles to catch Ann without--uh. Without putting his hands anywhere _weird_ on the very tight new costume. He's very much freaking out right now, and now that he's suddenly the only one without that Persona thing, he's _also_ feeling pretty worried about Kamoshida coming back with more guards.

He has to figure out what to do now, and he doesn't bother putting too much thought into that--there's no time for that, and it's not really his style anyway. 

"We gotta go," he says, heaving Ann up into a position where he can carry her and pretty much still move comfortably. "There could be more guards any second."

"You're leaving?" the cat asks. "But--"

Ryuji winces and looks back at him. "I mean," he says. "I can't just..." He sort of gestures toward Ann, the best he can without dropping her. "Anyway, it's not like the keys are actually there, right? We'll have to come back and keep looking."

He wouldn't have blamed the cat if he'd argued--Ryuji wouldn't want to be stuck in this place either, if he'd been the one trapped in a cell--but to his relief there's no argument. The cat's eyes flick over to where the keys _should_ be hanging on their hook, but then he just droops and nods.

"We'll be back," Ryuji says, trying not to feel like he's being a complete and total jerk for leaving this guy here (even though who is he kidding, he feels like shit for leaving _anyone_ here). 

"Yea?" says the cat.

"Yea," Ryuji says, and lets his eyes stray a little, to the other cells where the volleyball team is being tortured. They can't just leave all these people here, even if they are acting all weird, and had ignored him and Ann earlier. "Wouldn't be right not to, would it?"

He tries to convince himself, as he carefully hauls Ann back to the castle entrance, to the place where they know from last time they can get out of the castle and back to the regular, _normal_ streets of Tokyo, that the cat had looked slightly comforted by that.

-//-

Ann wakes up, and realizes that they're not in the castle anymore--she's sitting on the ground in an alley close to school, damp soaking her skirt, head still slightly groggy.

"How can you possibly be that heavy?" a voice asks, and Ann squints upward through her still vaguely swimming vision to see Ryuji bent over, hands on his knees, panting slightly. 

"Excuse me?" Ann demands.

"I said--"

She glares at him.

He looks down at her and shuts up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you may have noticed that it took me a while to get this chapter up, and the reason for that is that work is a thing and right now it is a thing that's taking up basically all of my brain power :(
> 
> Which leads me to the bad news, which is that until things calm down, I'm going to have to take some time off from this fic. I'm thinking it'll be about a month before I can even start working on the next chapter. I hate having to say that, but right now something has to give and it can't be work. I'm hoping to maybe knock out a few less-brain-intensive oneshots so you should see I'm still alive in the meantime--there's just so much involved in this fic (the P5 timeline, integrating P4 characters, etc etc) that I don't want to risk screwing things up by putting out chapters while I'm not at my best :(


	5. April 13 - April 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content for this chapter includes brief mentions of suicidal thoughts, and more cussing than I usually try to include (thanks, Ryuji).

_April 13_

_Before School_

Akria has never been one for showing up early to class. 

Back home, he'd had a bad habit of running late more than making sure he was early, and had perfected the art of sliding into his seat just seconds before class started. 

The fact that he shows up so early to class _today_ has nothing to do with Shujin being better than Yasogami, or with trying to make a good impression. Shujin is _not_ better than Yasogami (better funded and newer, he has to admit--but Yasogami is in Inaba, and Inaba is home). And anyway Akira's chances of making a good first impression had gone down the drain when all those rumors started to circulate. 

He's here because he's never been early to school before, and if Yu decides to try and corner him before class the way he'd caught him _after_ class yesterday, he probably won't be expecting to see Akira that early. And that's how he came to be here, the first one in the classroom, waiting for the other students to start trickling in while he fiddles with his phone and answers a text from Futaba.

> **Alibaba**
> 
> Do you think I could get a Persona?
> 
> I don't know. I think we'd have to catch your Shadow first
> 
> And then you'd have to face her
> 
> Do YOU think you could do that?
> 
> I
> 
> I don't know

The icon, indicating Futaba is typing, appears and disappears a few times. Akira waits patiently, wondering what she's going to say. He doesn't know how he feels about the idea himself--he's never head of someone intentionally trying to confront their Shadow, instead of just kind of accidentally stumbling into it. He doesn't know how wrong it could go.

> **Alibaba**
> 
> Sorry if that sounded harsh. I just don't want you to have to walk in blind 
> 
> No, it's okay
> 
> I think I want to know more before I decide what to do 
> 
> And I want to know what my Shadow was talking about

Right. The distortions she'd mentioned. That definitely doesn't match up with what Akira remembers hearing from other Shadows. His had taunted him until he couldn't stand hearing it without saying something, and Yusuke's had done pretty much exactly the same thing. Futaba's had been a lot less confrontational.

> **Alibaba**
> 
> It definitely seemed like she had something she wanted us to know
> 
> She wanted YOU to know it, anyway. Not sure she liked having me there
> 
> It's just because you're such an obviously suspicious person
> 
> ...
> 
> I hear you're some kind of delinquent or something.
> 
> Unfounded rumors
> 
> I don't know where you heard such hurtful and untrue things
> 
> :p 
> 
> People are starting to show up, I'll text you during lunch

He tucks his phone into his pocket, and looks around as if he's been doing something wrong--he hasn't been, because phones are allowed on school grounds and even in classrooms before the first bell rings--but there's still a feeling of doing something secret.

It's a good feeling.

Ann sits down in her desk in front of his just then, and gives Akira friendly, tired smile. "Good morning," she says.

"Morning," Akira says. "I'm not sure if it's _good_ yet, but it is definitely morning."

She laughs, and a couple of people in the next row of desks glance over at the two of them before putting their heads together and whispering frantically.

"And there goes the rumor mill," Akira says.

"They'll move onto something else soon," Ann assures him.

"Yea," Akira says. "Sure."

"They _will_ ," Ann says. "Someone will do something dumb and all the gossips will be talking about that for a while."

Akira makes an unconvinced noise. "People don't forget," he says. "I'm pretty sure people at my old school are _still_ talking about some of the stuff that went on from back when I was in middle school.

"You're from a smaller town, right?" Ann says. 

"Pretty small, yea," Akira agrees. 

"Well this is Tokyo," Ann says. "Everything moves fast here. There'll be some new rumor soon enough, trust me."

"What if the new rumor's about me?" Akira says, half joking.

"How many more things can there be about you for people to gossip about?" Ann asks.

Akira opens his mouth, then closes it again. He's not sure how he would even begin to explain how trouble seems to just follow him everywhere, like he's magnetically attracted to it. "I'm sure there'll be something," he says at last. "There usually is."

Ann's expression twitches like she's trying very hard not to laugh, and Akira responds with a grin. "I... may have had a slight reputation for trouble back home," he says. "I never did anything like what I was accused of, but there were plenty of..." TV World shenanigans, Shadow attacks, and Persona related emergencies. "...other things."

This time Ann _does_ laugh, not exactly loudly, but still loud _enough_ for a few people in nearby seats to turn and look at them. Akira hears a low murmur and exchanges a look with Ann. More gossip, cued up and ready to go.

"Seriously though," Ann says, lowering her voice as the classroom starts to fill. There are people close enough to overhear them now, if they tried. "Don't pay any attention to them."

Akira shakes his head. "I won't," he says, and for right now at least, it's easy to mean it. He's not sure if he and Ann and Ryuji are _friends_ yet, not really, but he thinks they're on their way. And if he has actual friends at school, it doesn't matter so much that there are gossips there too.

Kawakami comes in then, and a moment later she's followed by the bell. Akira gives Ann a last nod, and that's all the two of them have time for before class starts.

-//-

_April 13_

_After School_

-//-

Ryuji and Ann book it out of Shujin after class ends, heading for somewhere quiet where they can use the app to cross over.

They've talked about whether it might not just be easier to use the app from _inside_ the school--maybe up on the roof, where it seems like no one else ever goes--but neither of them is quite sure if that's a good idea. What if it dumps them somewhere random inside the castle, surrounded by a bunch of Shadows before they're ready to fight? It's probably safer to keep going in from the outside, like they have been, so they can avoid Kamoshida and his guards as much as possible.

(Which doesn't mean Ryuji _isn't_ ready to mess up any Shadows they run into, because he definitely is! It's just that Ann kind of has a good point about how being ambushed immediately sounds like a bad time, and maybe they should at least _try_ to be careful)

So anyway. Out the school gates they go, out onto the streets with everyone else fleeing the end of the school day, invisible within the crowd of other Shujin students. Ryuji's heading toward a little alley across the street from the school, where he figures they'll have some space to get into the castle without anyone seeing them, when he realizes there's a couple people standing _right_ next to the entrance to the alleyway, close enough that they would definitely notice the two of them disappearing out of reality.

"Look," he says, nudging Ann and pointing toward the two. "Think we should try and scare them off or something?"

Ann rolls her eyes. "Or maybe we could just wait for them to leave?" she suggests. Then she frowns. "Aren't those Akira's... friends?"

"What?" Ryuji takes another look, belatedly noticing that oh yea, those are _definitely_ the same two guys from the other day. "What are they doing back here?"

"Waiting for Akira again?" Ann suggests. She doesn't look happy with the idea. "He did seem like he was kind of loitering around our classroom when I left. I think he's probably trying to avoid them."

Ryuji stews on that for a second or two. He doesn't know the new kid well yet, but he seems like a good guy. And it bugs Ryuji that after Akira had been falsely accused of assault and shipped off away from home, that these guys are just hanging around bugging him at school. And he knows it's not his job to get involved, but... _man_ it bugs him. The way a lot of things have bugged him, ever since Kamoshida came in and destroyed the track team just because he _could_. It had opened Ryuji's eyes to the fact that _there are a whole lot of shitty, asshole adults in the world,_ and they don't care what happens to people like Ryuji, or Ann, or Akira. 

As far as Ryuji's concerned, Akira's stalkers are just more examples of that same shitty kind of person.

Which is why he makes the mistake of making eye contact with one of them as he and Ann walk past, scowling and sending _get out of here already_ thoughts his way.

Which one of the two (the taller one, with the silvery white hair even though he looks _way_ too young to be going gray) seems to take as an invitation to call out after him, and say, "Hey--you're Akira's friend, right?"

Ryuji stops dead in his tracks. _Friend_ might be pushing it after only a couple days, but heck yea he's going to jump to the guy's defense if he gets the chance. "Yea," he says, without missing a beat. "And you're his stalker, right?"

This takes White Hair by surprise. "I--no," he says. "It's not like that. Akira's like family to me, and he's out here in Tokyo alone." He takes a deep breath. "I'm just trying to get in contact with him so we can talk. That's all."

Sure. Just talk, no big deal. That's why Akira's back at school, hiding from exactly this confrontation. "I think Akira's made it pretty clear he doesn't want your _help_ ," he points out. "So maybe back off, leave him alone, and stop... stalking him at school, alright?" His voice is getting louder, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Ann trying very hard to pretend she isn't involved in the confrontation. "If _he_ thought you could help, maybe he'd be out here talking to you instead of _hiding_."

"I'm not--" the guy actually looks surprised by Ryuji's reaction. "This is for his own good. I'm here to _help_ him."

There are definitely people watching them now, and Ryuji can hear snatches of conversation as they walk past. Well, whatever. He already has a reputation as the school delinquent, what are a few more whispers going to do? He holds his ground, and doesn't blink.

"Yea, right," he says. _For his own good,_ sure. "I think you know that's bullshit," he says.

Ann grabs his arm and tugs. "Come _on_ , Ryuji," she mutters. Then, louder, she says to the other two, "I'm so sorry about--" She hesitates, face slightly flushed, and bites her lip instead of finishing. She tugs at Ryuji again, and this time he lets her pull him away from the confrontation.

"You know I'm right, Ann," he says as the two of them hurry up the street. 

"Maybe," Ann says. "Maybe we don't know the full story. But..." She shakes her head. "I don't know. He _was_ hiding in the classroom after school..."

They turn into their usual alleyway, and Ryuji pulls out his phone to get the app open. "The whole thing just sucks," he mutters. 

"I know," Ann says. 

"We should see if Akira wants to do something this weekend," Ryuji says.

"That might be nice," Ann agrees. "We could take a day off from Kamoshida's Castle and show him some things in Tokyo."

How weird is it, Ryuji thinks, that in less than a _week_ they've gone from classmates that barely spoke to each other, to fighting Shadows in alternate dimensions and making weekend plans.

"Maybe we could bring Akira _to_ the Castle," he suggests. "Think he might get a kick out of fighting Shadows?"

Ann laughs. "Yea, right," she says. "He'd think we were crazy if we ever told him about this."

"Probably," Ryuji admits, and starts navigation on the app. 

-//-

Akechi watches the entire scene play out from his vantage point in an alleyway off the main street. He'd come here today in the hope that he'd be able to get some evidence of Naoto's interest in Akira Kurusu--a picture or two, sent to the right place, a word in the right ear, and that advances his reputation within Shido's conspiracy. Easy. 

But instead--

Two Shujin students that look nothing like the description Akechi has for Kurusu had gotten into an argument with Naoto and her friend, and then come storming into the same alley where Akechi happens to be hiding and observing. He stays out of sight--he's _irritated_ to have wasted his time coming down here today, and has no desire to be recognized and dragged into a conversation--and waits for them to move on.

Except that's not what happens. Instead, after a brief conversation that Akechi is _very_ interested to have a chance to overhear, they vanish.

Akechi's eyebrows go up.

He'd come here to get some information to pass up the ladder, for other people to use as they saw fit. Unexpectedly, it's gotten him some information that seems _personally_ interesting.

He pulls out his own phone and navigates to his metanav search. They'd mentioned someone called Kamoshida, and a castle--it isn't much of a jump after that to guess that the two Shujin students, accessing the metaverse from just outside their school, are investigating a Palace tied to that. A second or two of work pulls up the relevant matches.

Akechi follows them in.

-//-

_April 13_

_After School_

-//-

It doesn't take Ryuji and Ann too long to find the cat again, now that they know where to look for it. Ryuji had been kind of worried that the castle guards might have moved the cat or even killed him after that last encounter, but he's still there. Looking a little more bedraggled than before, maybe, but he refuses to admit that he doesn't have the situation completely under control.

"Just you wait," the cat says, crossing its arms over its chest. "I'll figure out some way out of here, and _then_ those guards will be sorry they ever locked me up in the first place!"

"Sure," Ryuji says. "Or we could help." He's sitting on the floor while Ann leans against the wall next to the cat's prison door, still looking a little awkward in her bright red catsuit.

Ryuji doesn't know why she's feeling so awkward--she'd absolutely _roasted_ the Shadow guard things they'd run into on the way down here with her Persona. If it had been Ryuji with the Persona, he'd have been feeling like he was on top of the world.

(He's doing his best to help out, with the airsoft gun he'd brought, but it just isn't doing the kind of damage that Ann's Persona is)

"We'll definitely help," Ann agrees, looking at the cat. "If you can't figure out a way to get out, maybe we can start looking for the key." She nods at the cell door.

The cat slumps. "No good," he says. "I think some guards must have taken it with them."

"Well it's a good thing we can fight them now," Ryuji points out, almost bouncing up off the floor. "They keep attacking us anyway. _And_ they deserve it, for what they're doing to..." He hesitates, glancing up the hall in the direction of where the volleyball team is being tortured. 

"What," the cat says. "Those cognitions? They're not the real versions. They're just... constructs." He shrugs. "Kamoshida's mental idea of what these people are like."

"So this is what he's _thinking_ about the volleyball team?" Ann asks. "Not what he's _actually_ doing to them?"

"Exactly," the cat says.

"I dunno," Ryuji says. "Maybe he's not literally firing volleyballs out of cannons into the team, or whatever, but if he's _thinkin'_ stuff like this, I bet he's not doing _nothing_ to them.

Besides. He knows what Kamoshida had done during his brief stint as head of the track team. Why wouldn't he be doing the same or worse to the volleyball players?

"I guess that's a good point," Ann says thoughtfully. "But I don't think we can learn anything _here_ about what he's doing in the real world. We might have to try asking questions there. I could try talking to Shiho, maybe..." She shakes her head, looking like she's trying to refocus, and looks down. "So," she says. "Cat."

"I _do_ have a name," says the cat.

"Seriously?" Ryuji asks.

"Of course I do!" says the cat. "It's Morgana."

"Like the girl's name?" Ann asks.

The cat--Morgana--gives her a look of deep hurt, and Ann apologizes quickly. "So," she tries again. " _Morgana_. It seems like you know a lot about everything that's going on here, don't you?"

"Yep," Morgana says.

"And we need to know more about what we're going to run into," Ann says. "If we go looking for the key, can you tell us more about how all this works?"

Morgana nods, perking up with more enthusiasm than Ryuji has seen from him so far. "For sure!" he says. "Ask any questions you want--I'll tell you anything you want to know."

Ann ends up asking most of the questions, about Shadows and Persona and how they all work. Ryuji mostly listens, because it's not like _he_ has one of those Persona things, so what's he going to need to know about all that for? Luckily, Ann eventually notices he's zoning out, and informs Morgana that they're going to go key hunting. 

"We might not come back down," she says apologetically. "If we don't find the key today. But we'll keep coming back until we do."

"Yea," Ryuji agrees, "We're not going to just leave you here with Kamoshida walking around."

"With no clothes," Ann adds, with a shudder.

"Creep," Ryuji says cheerfully. "Anyway, Ann, come on--"

And they go. Since they're trying to find a Shadow that has the key to Morgana's cell, they can't hide from every Shadow they pass, like they have been so far. They don't hit _every_ Shadow, and sometimes they run when they turn out to be way too strong for them, but they're doing a lot more fighting than they have so far. 

They don't find the key, but they do find out some new things--like how the guards get more alert the more they fight, and how Ann can only set so many of them on fire before she gets too tired to keep going. The guards are getting pretty aggressively observant, Ann has declared that she absolutely cannot use her Persona to cast one more spell, and they're ready to call it a day and come back later--

When Ryuji stops dead in his tracks and says, "Did you see that?"

They're halfway up a long spiral staircase leading from the dungeons to the main floor, and he's just spotted something dark slipping away through the door at the top.

"No," Ann says from behind him. "All I can see is you, Ryuji, what is it?"

"I think there's somebody up there," Ryuji says.

"One of those Shadows?" Ann asks, and then--with obvious dread--"Kamoshida?"

"Someone else," Ryuji says. "Some guy in all black. And a mask." He glances over his shoulder for a second, meeting Ann's worried gaze behind _her_ mask. He's still playing catch up on everything that's going on here, trying to learn the rules as they go. But Ann's mask has something to do with how she calls her Persona. Does that mean Black Mask guy can do the same thing? 

"Come on," he says, now _running_ up the stairs. "Let's go check it out!"

"Ryuji!" Ann shouts after him, but he's faster than she is, even with the bad knee, and he bursts through the door before she even has a chance to start in on the lecture that's _definitely_ on the way. 

There's no sign of Black Mask in the corridor ahead, but there's also not too many places for him to have disappeared to. Ryuji starts running, through a banquet hall, another series of corridors, and then out, into the entrance hall.

This is where he catches up with Black Mask--the guy has stopped on the other end of the empty room (which, a tiny part of Ryuji's brain is pointing out, probably _shouldn't_ be empty. There are usually Shadows here, right? Does that mean Black Mask had taken them out? Ryuji hadn't been _that_ far behind him, how quick had he gone through them?). His face is almost completely hidden behind a sharp, beak like mask, but his head is turned slightly to one side as he considers Ryuji.

Suddenly, the _this might have been a bad idea_ of it all seems to rise up and smack Ryuji in the face. Chasing after a mystery guy dressed all in black, who can apparently take out all the Shadows between here and the stairs without breaking a sweat, is actually probably pretty dangerous.

Ryuji feels suddenly and intensely unprepared for whatever's about to happen.

-//-

Akechi is a little irritated, honestly, that he'd slipped up enough for one of the Shujjin students he'd followed into the castle to see him. It's not the end of the world--after following the clumsy trail they've left behind them for most of the afternoon, he's reassured that they're emphatically (almost comically) _not a threat_. One of them has a Persona that could barely light a candle, and the other doesn't have one at all. 

(There's also some kind of a cat... monster... _thing_ down in the dungeons, but since it's locked up, Akechi isn't concerned about it, either)

But it's _annoying_ that the angry blonde had spotted him. It's a blow to Akiechi's pride, if nothing else. A poke in the side that maybe he's gotten a little bit too cocky about being the only person with access to the metaverse. That's not true anymore, and he needs to make up his mind what to do.

There are definite possibilities to having two untrained and naive Persona users running around the Metaverse and getting into trouble. Akechi knows that Shido's plans are going to accelerate this year. He knows that he's going to be asked to spend a lot more time in the Metaverse than he has up until now, and that there are a lot of opportunities for things to go wrong, and if they go not just a _little_ wrong, but _very_ wrong, it might be better to have other Persona users to point the finger of blame at.

And more personally--

This is the the time Akechi has been waiting for. This is the year that his _personal_ plans will come into play. After all his planning and scheming, this is his chance to finally _hurt_ Shido.

If these two want to run around and cause trouble, it'll be some level of cover to hide any... personal trips Akechi has to make. 

(and maybe... deep down, in a place that belongs more to Robin Hood than to Loki, _maybe_ he is a little--intruiged. About what they're going to do) 

Of course, the angry blonde isn't going to be any use at all to Akechi if he doesn't even have a Persona. 

Akechi wonders if he can provoke him into awakening one. 

Slowly, keeping his face turned to the wall so that he stays hidden, Akechi reaches for his mask.

-//-

Ryuji is too far away--and Black Mask is looking in the wrong direction--to see the guy's face when he pulls his mask off. But he hears him shout, the single word _Loki_ echoing off the high ceiling of the castle's entrance hall. The Persona that answers the call is a terrifying in a way that Ann's Carmen simply _isn't_. Its tall and menacing, skin stamped in a pattern of stark, black and white geometry that makes Ryuji go cross eyed trying to watch it. The thing has horns the size of its face, and a sword _the size of Ryuji's entire body_ , and--

And while Ryuji is sitting there like a dumbass, gaping at this thing in front of him, Black Mask (with his mask now back on his face, sharp and cold and terrifying), is suddenly on top of him. Ryuji hits the ground so hard that his head smacks into the stone floor, knocking the breath out of him and sending his vision swimming for a second. 

He struggles to get his breath back, and manages to just about wheeze out _"The fuck are you_ \--" before he hears a rush of footsteps behind him, and then Ann's voice screaming his name. There's a flash from somewhere just out of Ryuji's sight, and he doesn't see what happens but there's no more sound from Ann.

"You bastard!" Ryuji spits. He tries to kick Black Mask off him, but he doesn't have any good leverage, and it doesn't _work._ If anything, the outburst seems to make the other guy _angrier_. Ryuji grunts as the pressure holding him down increases."Get off of me!"

Black Mask does _not_ get off of Ryuji, but says--in a voice muffled and distorted by his heavy facewear, but _clearly_ angry--"You shouldn't _be_ here."

"Fuck off," Ryuji says.

"This is for your own good," Black Mask says, and even behind the mask and the anger, Ryuji can _hear_ the _fucking smirk_. Black Mask reaches behind him, and pulls out a sword.

And this is what makes Ryuji finally-- _snap_. Not the sword--that part actually doesn't make much of a dent after some of the Shadows Ryuji's seen so far. 

But _this is for your own good_ hits a nerve. He'd heard the same thing from Akira's weird stalker earlier today. And Ryuji is so unbelievably sick and tired of not being able to fight back against shit like this--against adults that can ruin lives without anyone being able to do _anything_ , against people that think they know best, and that anyone trying to fight back is _wrong_.

_Will you not fight--_

Says a voice in his head.

_Just because the odds seem insurmountable?_

What?

_Will you truly give up here, without showing the world your own rebellion?_

Fuck no he _won't_.

And something hard calcifies against his face. 

Black Mask sees it, and pulls back. "No--" he starts to say, but the moment of surprise is enough for Ryuji to get an inch of leverage, to lift a hand to his face and _pull_ , shouting for _Captain Kidd_ as he does.

-//-

The force of the Persona awakening blows Akechi back across the room, where he hits a wall and tumbles in a boneless heap to the bottom. That--had honestly hurt a lot more than he'd expected. He's never seen a Persona awakening other than his own, and had not realized how strong the surge of energy that follows would be.

Every inch of him hurts.

Akechi smiles anyway, expression completely hidden behind his mask. Painful, yes, but knowing about two completely oblivious Persona users opens up-- _possibilities_.

But for now...

He pulls out a Goho-M, vanishing back to the exterior of the castle. From there, he pulls out his phone and uses the metanav to get back to the real world. Time to go home and _think_.

-//-

Ryuji and Ann stumble out of the Castle, to the courtyard area where the app will let them get back home. They're both absolutely exhausted--Ryuji from awakening his Persona, and Ann from being knocked out by the Black Mask's Persona attack. When they're finally back in the real world, in the real, solid street outside Shujin, both of them sag against a wall and just... look at each other.

" _Shit_ ," Ryuji says, succinctly.

Ann nods.

"So there are... other people out there," she says. "With Persona."

"With _powerful_ Persona," Ryuji says.

They're both quiet. Somehow, even with all the Shadows they've seen during their visits to the Castle, this is the first time it's felt actually, generally dangerous. The Shadows aren't _people_. Even the Kamoshida in the Castle isn't the same as the Kamoshida in the real world--Ryuji's _convinced_ that if they were the same person, he and Ann would already have been kicked out of school.

But this Persona user is--real, and dangerous, and Ryuji absolutely does not want anything to do with him.

"Let's get out of here," Ryuji mutters, and Ann is quick to agree.

-//-

_April 14_

_After School_

-//-

On Akira's second day of Operation Avoid Awkward Encounters with Yu and Naoto, something unexpected happens while he loiters in the halls near the practice building. He's leaning against the wall, fiddling with his phone and wondering how late will be late _enough_ to avoid them (he's explained to Futaba that he'll be late meeting her at the Pyramid for a few days, but he doesn't want to keep her waiting forever), when suddenly--

Someone bursts through a door next to where Akira is standing, colliding with him so forcefully that they're both sent tumbling to the ground. Akira bangs his elbow and lets out an _oof_ as all the air is knocked out of him, and looks up into a face that is vaguely familiar behind a mess of tears.

"...Shiho?" he says, when the first wave of confusion has passed. 

She makes a strangled, gasping noise that sounds like she's trying to say _something_ , but the tears in her voice make it completely incomprehensible. 

"Hey," Akira says, but she rolls off him and turns away, scrubbing at her face, shoulders shaking. People are starting to stare at them, and the last thing Akira wants is to get Shiho dragged down into the rumor mill with him. It's probably a good idea to get her out of the hallway as soon as he can. He swallows and takes a couple steps closer, lowering his voice. "Hey," he says again. "It _is_ Shiho, right? Ann's friend?"

She nods, and after a couple false starts, says, "I--yes. I'm sorry I ran into you. I'll just..." She starts to leave, but Akira's not ready to let her go. Not when she looks this upset.

"Do you want to go somewhere and talk?" he asks. "Just for a little while?" He glances back the way she'd come, toward the practice building. There's nothing obviously terrible coming in their direction, but Shiho had definitely been running from _something_. Volleyball practice, maybe--it's fairly obvious she's on the team, and she's dressed for exercise.

Shiho looks back too, and then nods. "If you really don't mind," she says. "I'm sorry to have to ask, but I would really like to get out of here."

Akira waits while she grabs her backpack from her classroom, then the two of them head out together.

(There's no sign of either Yu or Naoto on the street today)

(Akira does not know how to feel about this)

I think there's a diner up down the street here," he says vaguely, gesturing away from the school.

"Around the corner," says Shiho, the (presumable) Tokyo native. "A couple blocks down."

So they head around the corner and down a couple blocks, and settle in a corner booth of the diner Akira's vaguely noticed on his daily walk from the train station. They don't say much while they order food and wait for it to come, but when it finally comes, Akira decides to take a stab at conversation. 

"I know it's not really my place to ask questions," he says. "But are you okay?"

Shiho looks at her salad, fiddling with her fork. "I've just been having a hard time with some things lately," she admits. "With..." But she shrugs, and trails off, and doesn't finish.

"Listen," Akira says. "You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to. I know I'm probably the last person at school you would _want_ to talk to, but I'm here, and if you need someone to talk to, then... well, I'll listen." 

He's not actually expecting her to tell him what's wrong. He's the new kid in school, Shujin's resident delinquent, and Shiho doesn't have any reason to want to talk to him. Akira's actually kind of surprised she'd left school with him in the first place. 

"I appreciate that," Shiho tells him, with a shaky smile. "But I think... I'm sorry. I just don't want to talk about it."

Akira nods, and doesn't push. He's not sure what the right thing is to say, but at least Shiho seems a little bit less... about to fall apart, now. A little bit less terrified.

"Do you just want to sit here for a while?" he ventures.

Shiho gives him a very small smile. "If you don't mind," she says quietly.

So they sit there for close to an hour, mostly ignoring their food, and not even talking much. Akira's not sure at all if he's doing the right thing, or how he's supposed to help this girl he's met exactly once before today. At least Shiho doesn't seem bothered by the silence--if anything, she seems to be calming down as they sit there quietly.

"I think I'll be alright to go home now," Shiho says eventually. She starts to stand up and Akira jumps up too.

"You'll be okay to get home?" he asks.

"I'll be fine," Shiho assures him. "But thank you. For just--I didn't want to be at school today, and I didn't want to be alone."

"Sure," Akira says. "Any time."

He lingers another minute or two after Shiho heads out, walking toward the station, just so it won't seem like he's just following her. Then he checks the time on his phone, decides that his plans of cornering Yusuke after school will have to wait, and just heads home instead.

-//-

Shiho stands on the subway, holding an overhead handle, and clutching her school bag with the other hand. She's thinking hard, and only vaguely aware of the world around her.

Kamoshida had been bad last year, when she was a fist year student on the volleyball team. But he's... worse, now. Shiho thinks it might be because some of his _favorites_ had graduated at the end of last term, leaving the rest of them more at risk of his wandering eye. Or maybe it's her fault? Maybe she's done something wrong this year, to catch his attention. Or maybe--

The train stutters slightly as it slows to a stop at the next station, and the uneven motion shakes Shiho out of her thoughts. 

She's been thinking that she can't take much more of this. She's been thinking that if Kamoshida corners her again the way he'd tried before practice today, before she blurted some excuse and went running out of the practice building, then maybe...

She's been having a hard time seeing a way out of any of this, and then the school delinquent, of all people--the school delinquent who is practically a total _stranger_ , had taken the time to ask if she was okay, and to sit with her and see if she wanted to talk. 

And Shiho _doesn't_ want to talk about Kamoshida, she doesn't even want to _think_ about Kamoshida. 

But she feels better, just for having someone that had been willing to listen. It won't make Kamoshida any easier to deal with tomorrow, but... one day at a time, right? Volleyball has always been something she _loved_ , and more importantly (as her parents keep pointing out), it's her best hope of getting college recommendations. All she has to do is keep going one day at a time. Figure out ways to not ever be alone with him. Deal with the inevitable volleyball to the face during practice. She can _do_ this.

(Half formed thoughts of climbing up to the roof and taking just _one little step_ begin to fade away)

(For today, at least, this is enough to keep her going)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I've been focusing a lot on Ann and Ryuji, and not a lot on Akira and Futaba, and I swear I will actually get to the Pyramid in the next chapter. I did not expect Akechi to come in and get all... scheming on me, and that kind of stretched this chapter out.


	6. April 14 - April 16

_April 14_

_After School_

-//-

Akira's... worried, by his talk with Shiho, but there's nothing else he can do now, and when he gets back to Yongen-Jaya he does his best to shake it off and focus on the Pyramid trip they have in front of them. He stops in at Leblanc to drop off his school things and grab his supplies (he _really_ needs to find somewhere to buy weapons, to replace the ones the police had taken from him after his arrest).

Sojiro stops him on his way back out to grill him about his plans, but mostly he seems concerned about Akira getting back in before it gets too late. Since Akira doesn't think they'll be more than a couple hours in the Pyramid, he's able to answer the questions without technically lying, and Sojiro lets him go with a nod.

Akira loops around an extra block or two before approaching the Sakura house--as is becoming usual, Futaba has left her window open for him, so Akira vaults through and into the space she's cleared out for him to use as a landing zone.

"Ready?" Futaba asks immediately.

"Yep," Akira says, patting his bag. "We might have to take a day off after today so I can stock up on healing items, but we're good for today."

"Cool," Futaba says, hopping off her computer chair. Her phone is already out and ready--her hand blocks a lot of the screen, but from what Akira can see behind it, she already has the metanav open.

There's an increasingly large part of Akira that's hoping Futaba's going to be able to talk her Shadow around to a Persona--she's already so enthusiastic about the whole thing that he _really_ thinks she'd be good at it.

Futaba hits _begin navigation_ and the world blurs around them. Akira braces himself against the weird feeling of falling out of one world and into another, and then--there they are. A blinding sun beats down on the pair of them, and Akira is suddenly sweating in his full metaverse attire.

The Pyramid looms up above them, and Akira looks up at it, taking a deep breath and letting it out again.

There are a lot of things about Tokyo that are _hard_. Showing up at school and hearing the things people are whispering about him is hard. Being away from home with basically no hope that he'll ever get back is hard. Trying to figure out what to do about Yu and Naoto camping outside his school is so hard it's keeping Akira up at night.

But this?

Being here in the metaverse is a _relief_.

They head inside and up the stairs as far as they can go. So far, their limited expeditions into the Pyramid haven't gotten them any further than the first landing, and there's a heavy gate blocking the way forward. 

Neither of them has any idea how to get past, and further up the stairs. Whether or not they should go up the stairs is a question whose answer is _obviously_ yes--it's just common sense, isn't it, that the most interesting part of the Pyramid is going to be at the very top? Unfortunately, that doesn't make it any easier to figure out a way to get there.

Akira's never seen anything like this inside the TV World, so their working theory for now is that if they're lucky, there might be a key in the part of the Pyramid that they dohave access to.

So, as is becoming usual, they turn away from the stairs, go through the side door, and plunge into the waiting halls of Shadows.

If Akira had been with other Persona users, getting through this area would have been pretty straightforward. The Shadows here are tough, for sure, but he's seen worse. The ones that had been in Nanako's Heaven were way worse, and so were the ones in Adachi's fake-Inaba. If Akira is careful, and cautious, and _really_ particular about targeting the Shadows' weaknesses, he can just about hold his own. 

(Futaba, standing by with the healing items, helps keep him on his feet longer than he could have managed alone)

But that strategy falls apart whenever there's more than one or two Shadows in the fight. When they come at Akira and Futaba in _numbers_ , they run. 

Akira tries not to let it get to that point too often, because Futaba is not a natural sprinter.

So instead he focuses on keeping hidden from Shadows, which is honestly much easier than it ever had been in the TV World. There is so much more detail in the Pyramid, so many things to hide behind or under, that Akira feels like he could have gone from one side to the other without being spotted by a Single Shadow.

Except that there are puzzles too, and traps, and strong Shadows that don't move around at _all_ but stand still in one place like they're just waiting for a fight. All that means that getting around the Pyramid isn't as easy as just sneaking past everything that moves, and after a while Akira announces that they need to stop for the day. He's beat, Futaba's almost out of healing items, and there's only so much progress one person fighting alone can make.

They retreat back to the safe room just off the main stairs, where they sit on opposite sides of the large table in the middle, and talk strategy while the room wavers back and forth between Pyramid and bedroom.

They could have done this just as easily back in the real world, of course, but there are dangers with that idea that Akira doesn't really want to face. Sojiro, mainly--if his temporary guardian catches him scheming with Futaba, Akira's pretty sure he'd be out on his ear by the end of the day. 

"You said you had a friend with a Persona," Futaba says, when they're both sitting. "Right?"

"Yusuke," Akira agrees. "Yea."

He watches her from behind his mask, trying to keep from looking too hopeful. He _absolutely_ wants Yusuke here, for all kinds of reasons--but Futaba is clearly terrified of being around other people, even if she _is_ slowly warming up to him.

"I was thinking," Futaba says. "We might get through the Pyramid faster, if we had a party."

"Probably," Akira says, keeping his voice neutral. "We'd have to run away from fights less often, for sure."

"So maybe..." Futaba kind of looks down at the table, and her next few words are a mumble. "Maybe you should see if he'd want to help us here."

 _Yes_.

"Okay," Akira says immediately. "It'd probably mean taking a couple days off, though. I don't want to go back by his place, because... honestly, his sensei has a grudge against me, for--uh--all the _other_ times we've gotten in trouble in the metaverse. But I know the name of his school, and I think I can cut class an hour early or so. Ann might cover for me, I think she'd be pretty sympathetic. And if I show up _there,_ I shouldn't have to worry about running into--why are you laughing?"

Because she is, suddenly. Hand pressed over her mouth, shoulders shaking as she struggles to keep it quiet. "Sorry!" she says. "Sorry, it's just--I wasn't expecting you to have a whole plan ready immediately."

Akira gives her a sheepish grin. "I've been thinking about it a lot," he admits. "I haven't had a chance to try heading by his school, but I think it's the best bet." It's the _exact_ same plan Naoto had come up with to track him, but Akira's trying not to think about that. After all, it had _worked_ for Naoto. He's hoping he'll have the same luck.

"Okay," Futaba says, calming down and letting out a deep breath. "So... maybe you can do all that tomorrow?"

"Are you sure?" Akira asks.

Futaba hesitates. Then, turning away slightly, so that Akira can't quite read the expression on her face, she says, "He's your friend, right? You should be able to go see him. And maybe--if I don't... if it gets... _harder_ , then maybe we can just go back to the way we're doing things now."

Akira's not going to push. This is Futaba's Pyramid, in a way that he doesn't completely understand. It's not just that her name on the metanav had pulled it up, or even the flickering phantom of her Shadow that they catch glimpses of every once in a while. Well, it _is_ those things, but also there's just something about this place that's _Futaba's._

It's weird. But Akira's not going to push her into accepting Yusuke if she's not ready. Not here.

"Should we head back?" he says instead. "I have a ton of homework, and Sojiro might have noticed at least one of us is missing."

He _thinks_ he sees Futaba's Shadow out of the corner of his eye as they head out, but it's gone so quickly that it could have been just a trick of the light.

-//-

_April 15_

_Early Morning_

-//-

> **Ryuji**
> 
> Hey so I was thinking
> 
> I know I know I know we shouldn't go back to the castle for a while
> 
> Because of that black mask guy and everything, if he's still hanging around
> 
> But we can't just sit around and do nothing
> 
> Maybe we could try looking into kamoshida at school? I bet some of the volleyball team would tell us if he's really doing shit to them like we saw in the castle
> 
> You have that friend on the starting lineup, right? Shiho?
> 
> Ann, you have to try talking to her

Ann stares muzzily at her phone's screen from the comfort of her bed, and thinks about either throwing it out the window or blocking Ryuji's number forever.

"Why are you up so _early_?" she mumbles, and then spots the time stamps on the messages and corrects this to, "Why were you up so _late_?"

Although if nothing else, the stream of consciousness from 2:00 in the morning is pretty good evidence that no, actually, Ryuji _can't_ sit around and do nothing. They'd agreed yesterday to stay out of the castle for a week or so, and hope that whoever the Black Mask is, that he gets bored and moves on. Ann had felt _guilty_ about it, definitely, because Morgana's still trapped in the dungeons and won't even know why they're not coming back.

But she doesn't want to see that guy ever again. If Ryuji hadn't awoken his Persona right at that moment, Ann doesn't want to think about how badly yesterday would have turned out. 

So they're going to wait, and when they go back they are going to be _very, very careful and not go running ahead on our own, right Ryuji?_

He'd agreed with hardly any prompting on her part, which tells Ann that he'd been scared too. Even if he won't admit it.

She sits up in bed, yawning and rubbing her eyes. Ryuji must have eventually fallen asleep, because his texts had stopped at around 2:30, but she should probably answer. The problem is that--he's right. They _do_ have to do something. They can't just sit around and... _let_ unfair things keep happening. Ann hears the echo of her Persona's voice in her head, and knows she's made a choice. She can't just close her eyes to things that are wrong anymore.

Slowly, thinking it through as she types, Ann taps out an answer to Ryuji's flood of texts.

> **Ryuji**
> 
> Shiho actually called me last night

Well--technically, Shiho had called while Ann was with Ryuji in the Castle. She'd come back to the real world and found two missed calls and a voicemail from her friend. When Ann called back, it had turned into one of those good, _long_ conversations that friends sometimes have.

Ann hadn't realized Shiho's been having such a hard time lately. 

She's going to be better at paying attention from now on.

> **Ryuji**
> 
> She was pretty upset. She didn't tell me why, exactly, but I think

Ann thinks of a brace on Shiho's leg, a bruise around her eye. She really _should_ have noticed.

> **Ryuji**
> 
> I think it's something to do with volleyball. So it's something to do with Kamoshida

Maybe, if she hadn't been so worried about Kamoshida creepily hitting on _her_ , she would have seen whatever it is he's doing to Shiho.

( _She is going to do better from now on_ )

> **Ryuji**
> 
> I don't know if we're going to get anything definite out of Shiho, she seemed really upset
> 
> But you're right, we should try and investigate.There has to be someone at Shujin that will tell us what Kamoshida is doing to the team

She puts her phone back down on her bedside table, swings her legs over the side of her bed, and just sits there for a moment or two. The apartment around her is absolutely quiet--her parents are away, again. Travelling. It's just Ann alone in the early morning quiet, thinking about how her life has turned...

Strange.

Then she stands, and gets dressed for school.

Ann runs into Akira at the station while she waits to transfer trains--he's standing just on the edge of the crowd of people waiting for the train to come in, fiddling with his phone, slouching in a way that makes him seem unremarkable and almost unnoticeable. Ann's eyes slide right past him at first, before he looks up, sees her, and calls out.

"Hey," Ann says, stopping next to him. "I didn't see you there at first."

"It's crowded here," Akira agrees. "But, uh--" And suddenly he looks a little bit awkward. "Would it be weird if I asked you for a favor?"

"What kind of favor?" Ann asks. 

"I need to cut class," Akira says. "Which--I know that sounds bad, but I'm not talking about skipping a whole day of school or anything, I just... need to leave about an hour early, and if anyone asks, I was just hoping you could... kind of cover for me."

"Why do you need to leave?" Ann asks. She's more curious than anything else--they have Ushimaru at the end of the day, and he's not going to care if Akira's there or not. He'll just have to find someone else to throw chalk at for once.

"I'm trying to get in contact with someone," Akira says, after a slight pause. "A friend. His--guardian kind of thinks I'm a bad influence."

"Because of your arrest?" Ann asks sympathetically.

"Well--I'm sure that didn't help," Akira says. 

He looks sheepish.

Ann is suddenly much more curious about what other reasons he has to think Akira is a bad influence.

"Anyway," Akira says. "I haven't had a chance to talk to him since I got to Tokyo, because--well, because of his guardian. So I thought, if I catch him at school..." He trails off. "Sorry. I know it's really a lot to ask after we've known each other for less than a week."

"No," Ann says. "It's okay." And now it's her turn to fidget, to hold her back a little more tightly, to look away from him as she says, "I talked to Shiho last night. She said--well, you helped her out yesterday."

Akira looks surprised for a second, and then embarrassed. "She was upset," he says. "I just thought she looked like she needed to talk."

"Maybe," Ann says. "But she's my best friend, and I didn't see that at all, so... thank you. And if you need to go see your friend today, I can cover for you."

"Thanks," Akira says. Tentatively, he adds, "And Shiho, is she... doing okay?"

"She's telling her parents she's sick and staying home for a couple days," Ann says. "She... needed some time off."

"Yea," Akira says. "She... seemed like someone at school is really bothering her."

"Kamoshida," Ann mutters.

"Kamoshida?" Akira echoes.

She flushes, because she hadn't _meant_ for Akira to hear, and because she doesn't want to explain that she and Ryuji have decided to investigate Kamoshida's probably abuses of the volleyball team because they'd seen it in his Castle. So instead, she not-quite-lies, and says, "I think Kamoshida might be abusing the volleyball team."

It sounds faintly ridiculous to say it out loud, even after seeing the castle, even after hearing Shiho cry on the other end of the phone last night, even after living with the predatory way Kamoshida has looked at _her_ since she was a first year. It's just that Kamoshida is--well, _he's the king of the castle_ , even in the real world. It just... happens to be a little bit less literal here. People listen to him--teachers and students and the volleyball team _especially_ , because he's good at what he does, and he brings positive attention to what would otherwise be just another high school in a sea of them in Tokyo and because he has a kind of charisma to him that covers up anything _bad_. 

And who would ever think to question that?

Well--the new kid would. Akira looks suitably horrified and disgusted, but not actually surprised. "Did Shiho say...?"

Shiho hadn't talked much about the _details_ of what had her so upset, when she'd called Ann last night. But it's a more reasonable explanation of why Ann is suddenly thinking about this, so she just shrugs and lets Akira draw his own conclusion.

Akira looks away, and Ann thinks that's the end of the conversation. 

Then Akira--without look at her--says, "We can't just let him keep doing that."

What had he told them about how he'd been arrested? That he'd been trying to help a woman being assaulted by a stronger man.

Maybe she should have expected this reaction. "Ryuji and I are going to try and find some evidence," Ann tells him. "Someone on the team who's willing to say something."

"Need any help?" Akira asks.

Ann smiles.

-//-

_April 15_

_Lunchtime_

-//-

It turns out that _no one on the volleyball team_ is willing to say anything remotely negative about Kamoshida.

Or at least, they're not willing to talk to Akira, Ann, or Ryuji. During lunch, the three of them split up and start asking questions of as many volleyball players as they can find. Ann heads up to the third floor, Ryuji takes the second, and Akira goes down to the first. It takes him a while to identify people that are on the team, since he's been at the school less than a week, but has some luck when he just starts going up to everyone with visible bruising. 

None of them--whether because of his reputation or Kamoshida's--will tell him anything. After one particularly unhelpful conversation with a third year volleyball player in one of the classrooms, a girl sitting nearby (who identifies herself as the student council president, because _of course she is_ ) actually tells him off for bothering people. She stands up and escorts Akira from the room, despite his protests.

And of course, the moment that Akira is being politely but _firmly_ ejected from the classroom is exactly the same moment that Kamoshida happens to come walking past. 

He doesn't particularly want a confrontation with the coach, so he ducks his head, hides his expression behind his glasses, and turns in the opposite direction. The immediate, heavy hand that comes down on his shoulder before he has a chance to take a single step tells him that this has not worked.

"I heard that you've been asking questions about me," Kamoshida says. He smiles as he says it, but it's a smile like a shark. He's not being friendly, and he's not trying to fool Akira into thinking he is. 

Akira considers whether there's any _good_ answer to this statement, and decides that the man who had waited less than an hour after the start of the school year to start spreading rumors about him is probably just going to keep doing that anyway. The best Akira can hope for during this particular conversation is to not make anything _worse_.

And if he does manage to move farther up Kamoshida's shit list, it's going to make it a lot riskier to leave early and get over to Yusuke's school.

So, even though it goes against every one of Akira's instincts, he lowers his gaze, slumps his shoulders, and mumbles something about not trying to cause trouble ( _ha_ ). 

"You had better not be causing me any trouble," Kamoshida says, jabbing a finger into Akira's personal space. "Everyone knows you're just a delinquent, Kurusu."

Akira bites his tongue, hard, to stop himself from answering. Kamoshida, he gets the sense, _wants_ Akira to be scared of him. There's something about Kamoshida's tone, _almost_ teasing, like he's trying to bait Akira into snapping back.

It's just too bad that there's nothing about this self important volleyball coach that even comes close to scaring Akira. He's just--he's faced people that are so much _worse_ than Kamoshida. Sure, Kamoshida is terrible, and gross, and a definite threat to anyone he thinks he can get away with hurting.

But all that means is that Akira wants to fight back. It does not mean that there's anything there that he is actually afraid of.

He reminds himself that Kamoshida already doesn't like him, that he's been spreading rumors since Akira's first day at Shujin, and that he really, _really_ doesn't need any more attention from Kamoshida on the same day he's planning to cut class and go see Yusuke. So instead of saying anything at all, Akira bites his tongue and stares hard at the ground.

"Nothing to say?" Kamoshida asks. He puts his hand on Akira's shoulder and gives a little shove--Akira, who is still staring hard at the ground instead of looking at Kamoshida--is taken off guard, and stumbles back against the wall. 

Don't say anything _,_ he reminds himself. Don't say anything, don't say anything--this isn't the right time to make trouble. Save it up for later. 

"Pathetic," Kamoshida says, and turns dismissively away.

Akira doesn't move until Kamoshida has gone down the hall and around a corner. Only then does he push himself off the wall, climb quickly up the stairs, and head for his classroom. Ann had suggested they meet up about ten minutes before the end of class to compare notes, and both of them are already there when Akira joins them. 

Since lunch is only half over, and this is well before the meeting time they'd planned, Akira assumes that they've had about the same kind of luck as he is.

"I ran into Kamoshida downstairs," he announces, as he slumps into his seat. "I guess he heard about some of the questions we were asking about him."

"Yea?" Ryuji asks. He's in the seat next to Ann's today--Akira can see the desk's usual occupant on the other side of the room, occasionally shooting a judgmental _look_ in Ryuji's direction. "He do anything to you?"

"Just kind of shoved me around a little," Akira mutters. "But not--it wasn't a big deal." He shakes his head, not even trying to hide a frown. "There's no point saying anything to him right now," he says, more to try and convince himself than either of them. He had not _liked_ letting Kamoshida walk all over him. "We need proof first that he's doing something wrong."

Ann gives him a sympathetic look, but to Akira's gratitude she doesn't actually push for any more details about Akira's confrontation with Kamoshida. Instead, gesturing to herself and Ryuji, she says, "We didn't find anything either."

"I was _that_ close to getting something out of Mishima," Ryuji complains.

"No you weren't," Ann says. "You were just 'that close' to scaring him off."

The name vaguely registers to Akira as belonging to a classmate of his and Ann's. When he looks past Ryuji toward Mishima's desk, sure enough he's sitting there looking glum and bruised, and occasionally looking nervously at Ryuji.

"He's definitely doing something, though," Akira says. "Kamoshida, I mean. It can't be normal for _every_ member of the volleyball team to be injured."

"No way," Ryuji says. "I was on the track team last year, and I mean--people got hurt sometimes, sure, but it was never as bad as the volleyball team is now." 

"We'll just have to keep investigating," Ann says with a sigh. She looks up at the clock, then back over at Ryuji. "Lunch is almost over," she says. "You should get back to your classroom."

"Yea, yea..."

He heads out, and in a few minutes class picks up again. Akira pays the bare minimum of attention to his classes for the rest of the afternoon, and isn't entirely surprised that Ann seems to be zoning out in the seat in front of him, too. There's something that's just _wrong_ with the idea of Kamoshida being allowed to do whatever he wants, to hurt people, just because he happens to be popular and athletic. What had Ryuji called him, the first day of school? The king of a castle?

He's definitely _acting_ like he thinks he's the ruler of this place.

The only question is what the three of them are supposed to do to help stop it. No one else is going to say anything--no one else even seems to notice. Or at least, some part of Akira _hopes_ that they haven't noticed. It would be worse, if they'd noticed and then just decided not to see.

He's so caught up in his thoughts that he doesn't even realize how late in the day it's getting until Ann turns around between classes and whispers, "Weren't you going to leave early today?"

The reminder hits Akira like an electric jolt up his spine, and he nods. Yusuke. "Thanks," he whispers back, and slips away.

Trouble, some part of him sings. This is going to be _so much trouble_ if he's caught.

He doesn't bother to hide his grin. After his confrontation with Kamoshida earlier today, after how bad it had felt to stare at the floor and not talk back, he kind of has to admit that he wouldn't mind a little bit of actual trouble.

-//-

_April 15_

_After School_

-//-

Yusuke's second year of high school is off to a miserable start.

It's not the school itself that's the problem, really. His teachers are generally friendly and know their subjects, and Yusuke gets along relatively well with his classmates. He isn't really close to anyone, but he's always been bad at making friends, and anyway he has people to talk to at lunch or borrow notes from when he needs it. He's not a social pariah, he's just--not popular. It had been like that last year, and Yusuke isn't surprised at all that a new school year hasn't changed that. 

The problem is his sensei, who has _not_ backed off on his plan to keep Yusuke under surveillance every moment of every day when he is not actually in class, and who has been putting very... _definite_ pressure on him about the work Yusuke is going to do for the upcoming show. It will be the first painting of Yusuke's that his sensei will be putting his own name on (the first that he will _plagiarize_ from Yusuke). 

Yusuke hates it. He hates it to the point that it seems to have dried up his paintbrush. Whenever he sits down in front of a canvas, and tries to think of something to make, it's like his mind has gone completely blank. There are no ideas in his mind that feels simultaneously good enough to please his sensei, and not so important that it won't... hurt to have it taken away.

So Yusuke's home life has been tense. He and sensei are not getting along, his work is suffering, and--thanks to last week's visit from Yu--he's worried about Akira, too. It's not really a surprise that while he's at school he's distracted, upset, and struggling to focus.

On Friday afternoon, after the end of his last class, Yusuke takes his time gathering his belongings together. He stops to talk first to a classmate who had been sick yesterday and is asking after lecture notes (Yusuke takes random and rambling notes, when he remembers to take them at all--he had not managed to that yesterday, to his classmate's disappointment). Then he stops by the staff room with a question for his homeroom teacher.

Then, finally out of excuses, he walks out of Kosei's main gate and starts heading toward the street where his sensei usually parks. This being Tokyo, there's nowhere conveniently close to Kosei, and the car is always at least a block or two away.

Yusuke's lost in thoughts, keeping up with the crowd of students heading for home or to the train station, and at first he doesn't notice that someone has peeled away from the main press of the crowd to walk next to him. But the someone says _hey_ , and when Yusuke shakes off his distracted thoughts and looks up--

"Akira!"

He stops walking out of sheer surprise, then immediately apologizes and moves out of the way to the side of the road as a third year that had been walking just behind almost bumps into him and trips over his feed.

"Hi," Akira says, grinning at him like a madman. "Can we talk?"

There are at least a hundred questions warring in Yusuke's mind for the honor of being picked first, and after a few more seconds of just sheer surprise, he picks the one that seems like it's the most important. 

"Are you okay?" he asks.

Akira's smile melts away, and he doesn't quite look at Yusuke as he answers. "Sometimes," he says. "I'm not--hurt, or anything."

A complicated answer, but then again the situation seems complicated from beginning to end. Yusuke thinks about pressing the issue, but decides against it. Instead, he says, "Yu came to visit me."

"Yu came to _you_?" Akira asks. 

"A couple of weeks ago," Yusuke says. "Why? Is that bad?" It had certainly surprised him at first, but after hearing Yu's explanation he doesn't think that it's a _bad_ thing that Yu had come to visit.

"I'm not allowed to see him while I'm on probation," Akira says.

Yusuke raises his eyebrows in Akira's direction. He has never heard his friend say that he wasn't allowed to do something as if that was actually going to stop him from doing whatever it is. Something is obviously wrong. "Are you afraid?" he asks.

Akira opens his mouth. Closes it again. Flushes, and looks away. "Yes," he admits. "Yusuke, I was _arrested_. It was--"

He doesn't explain any further than that. Yusuke's not sure that he doesn't _want_ to, but he doesn't seem to have the words to do it. They've known each other long enough, though, that Yusuke thinks that he can see a little bit of the feeling behind the words Akira can't say. Whatever had happened to him after he was arrested, it had not been good.

"I don't want them to do anything to Yu," Akira manages at last. "Or Dojima, or _Nanako_. I mean, they could all still get in a lot of trouble for knowing about my parents for so long. And Dojima's in the police, if he got in trouble over this, it could ruin--everything for him. If anyone found out I'm ignoring the terms of my probation, and I'm still in contact with them? It would be so much worse."

"I think they'd be willing to take the risk," Yusuke points out. "Yu obviously is."

"Well I'm not," Akira says. "They're _not_ going to get hurt because of me." He sighs. "You won't say anything to Yu if he comes back, will you? About me coming to see you?"

"I--" Yusuke starts, and then stops abruptly as a familiar car pulls up in front of them, feeling suddenly cold.

_How could he have forgotten about Sensei?_

"Oh no," he mutters. 

Akira stiffens when he follows Yusuke's gaze, but he doesn't say anything. Both of them watch in silence as Madarame gets out of the car, scowling at Akira with so much intensity that it seems to twist his face into something barely human.

"Sensei," Yusuke tries to say. "I--"

His sensei ignores him completely, focusing on Akira. "I heard that you've finally gotten yourself into some real trouble," he says. "I can't say that I was surprised. You've always been an... unfortunate influence."

He says it with a smile, because there are in public, but his eyes are hard. 

Akira says, "I just came here to talk to Yusuke. We're not doing anything wrong."

"Yes," Madarame says. "Well. Yusuke has much more important things to be spending time on than you."

Yusuke's anger flares. "That's _not_ tr--"

"Later, Yusuke," his sensei snaps.

"No," Yusuke says. "I--"

This time he stops, not because he's been interrupted, but because there is a flash of... something on his sensei's face that Yusuke cannot remember ever having seen before. It's an ugly kind of angry that is so different from what Yusuke knows of him that it draws him up short and leaves him struck dumb.

"It's okay," Akira says, into the little bubble of silence that follows. All around them is the noise of Tokyo. The sounds of traffic, a dozen conversations from Yusuke's classmates, far off shouting from somewhere down the street. But around the three of them, there's just a heavy, _heavy_ silence. "I'll leave." 

For now, his tone says. I'm leaving, _for now_. Yusuke doesn't think that any of of them actually believes that Akira is giving up this easily. 

"If you come back here again," Madarame says. "Or attempt to contact Yusuke, I will make sure that there are consequences. I have connections that mean you will regret ignoring this."

What connections? Yusuke wonders. The only people that come to mind are his sensei's art and business connections, but it's hard to imagine any of them being able to do something to keep Akira away. Maybe it's just a bluff? If so, it's a stupid one. Yusuke does not even have to look at Akira's face to know that he's more likely to take it as a challenge, and that he's not going to let it stop him. For that matter, _Yusuke_ isn't going to let it stop him. Akira is his best friend. And after their conversation today, seeing how Akira is... walling himself off from his family, Yusuke isn't going to abandon him.

"Sure," Akira says. Then he looks at Yusuke, and says--"Just before I leave, I wanted to tell you that..." He seems to be choosing his words carefully, putting a surprising emphasis on them. "There's... this new app. It's--a little like a TV."

And then he stares hard at Yusuke, who looks back at him in complete confusion. An app like a TV, what does _that_ mean? "Like... Netflix?" he tries tentatively.

Akira gives him a look that says _please get this_.

Yusuke returns it with one that says _I have no idea what you're talking about_.

"Come, Yusuke," his sensei says. "We're leaving." He puts a hand on Yusuke's shoulder, steering him toward the car. "You--"

Like a TV.

"Akira--" Yusuke twists back around to face his friend. "Like _that_?" he asks.

"Yea," Akira says, looking relieved. "Exactly."

"On an _app_?"

"Yea."

"How would you even fit?" Yusuke asks, trying to imagine squeezing into the TV World through a phone.

But before Akira has a chance to even try to explain (although Yusuke has no idea how he'd manage to do that with his sensei right there), he's being shoved into the car, and that's the end of the conversation.

Well.

Yusuke is absolutely going to have to find some way to get to Akira after all that.

-//-

_April 16_

_After School_

-//-

"So," Ann says, after the last bell has rung, and the class is packing up to leave for the day. "I didn't get a chance to ask how your meeting with your friend went yesterday."

There's no immediate answer from Akira, so Ann looks up from her bag. He's doing that thing again where he hides his expression behind his glasses, and Ann is starting to pick up on the fact that this means he's trying not to show anyone what he's thinking or feeling. Ann's guessing that if everything had gone great yesterday, he would have just told her.

"So... not very well?" she asks.

Akira lets out a breath. "No," he says. "Yusuke's guardian was there, and he's... never liked me."

He doesn't elaborate, and Ann decides that it's better to just change the subject. "Do you want to hang out with me and Ryuji today?" she asks. "We were going to head down to Central Street and--" She falters for just a second. _Mostly_ what she and Ryuji are planning today is to stock up on castle supplies for when they go back. Healing items, maybe some new gear from that airsoft shop where Ryuji had bought his model gun. Is it going to be dangerous to invite Akira to come with?

No, she decides. He might think they're a little weird, but--well, if she's being honest with herself, Akira's just a little weird too. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

"We were going to do some shopping," Ann says, after a very short pause. 

"Sure," Akira says. "Why not?" He looks down at his phone and Ann catches a glimpse of the name of the person he's been texting. Alibaba it says, which is a weird name. "I don't think I can stay too long, I have somewhere else I need to be later, but--" He nods. "Thanks. It'll be nice to actually be able to hang out with someone after school without it being a whole _thing_."

Ann winces. "You... really haven't had an easy time in Tokyo," she says. "Have you?"

"No," Akira says.

"Well," Ann says, as brightly as she can. "Me and Ryuji don't scare easily." Mentally, she adds _except when there are terrifying people in masks attacking us,_ and she fights hard to keep that off her face. 

"Good to know," Akira says, swinging his bag over his shoulder. "Ready to go?"

"Yep!" Ann says, and they walk out together. Ryuji's leaning against the opposite wall with his hands shoved in his pockets, looking every inch the delinquent that people think he is. Ann pulls him aside and has a very quick discussion about bringing Akira with them. Ryuji doesn't take much convincing, and all three of them walk out of the building together.

They talk on their way to the station. About school, of course, and about how Shiho had texted Ann to say she'll be back in school on Monday, and about their still fruitless efforts to get anyone to admit to what Kamoshida has been doing with him. Ryuji had even suggested talking to the members of the old track team, because Kamoshida had run that for a while last year, and it hadn't gone well, apparently. But none of the track team members had been willing to talk either--apparently because of Ryuji, who none of them seemed to like--and even Ryuji had admitted that Kamoshida had never gone as far with the track team as he seemed to be with the volleyball team.

("Mostly just worked us too hard," he'd said. "And tried to provoke us into ruining the team ourselves. But I guess I was the only one stupid enough to fall for it, so... guess I can't blame them for thinking it was all my fault the team broke up.")

It's a pretty fun afternoon. Ann finds some clothes on sale (the boys do a very good job of not looking _too_ bored), Akira picks up a book from the shop on Central Street (a series he's liked since he was a kid, apparently--Arsene Lupin. He's more excited than Ann has seen him yet to find one he hasn't yet read), and then Ryuji's dragging them toward the airsoft shop. 

"What's down here?" Akira asks, as they turn off the main street into the alley where Untouchable is. For a second, when Ann looks at him, she thinks she sees something like a blue glow reflecting onto his face. Maybe a sign from one of the shops she thinks, although she can't see any blue ones nearby.

"You ever been in an airsoft shop before?" Ryuji calls over his shoulder. He's already at the door, almost bouncing ahead of them in his excitement. Ann resists the urge to grab his shoulders and physically hold him still. She hasn't actually been in here before, and now that she's seeing it for herself, it seems... sketchy. Not the kind of place that's going to welcome over excited high school students.

(But there's someone in a Black Mask in Kamoshida's castle, and Ann wants every advantage she can possibly get)

"No," Akira says. "It's not really the kind of thing you get in small towns." 

"It's awesome," Ryuji says, and leads the way into the sketchy looking shop. Ann brings up the rear, trying to hide her nerves. The guy behind the shop counter _and_ the single other customer look up at her, and she feels her face flush. Yea, so she can guess that this place probably doesn't have a lot of customers that look like her.

She hurries over to stand by Ryuji and Akira.

Ryuji is already deep into an explanation of everything in the store for Akira's benefit, chattering away in a running commentary that mostly boils down to various things in the shop he thinks are cool. Ann notices the guy behind the counter shooting irritated, _what is this total novice doing in my store_ looks in Ryuji's direction.

Ryuji either doesn't notice or doesn't care.

Ann sticks close to her friends and tries to focus on looking around, instead of on Ryuji's running monologue or the looks he keeps getting.

"Oh hey," Akira says suddenly, as Ryuji pauses for breath. "Look at this."

He's looking at a display near the back of the store, squatting down to get a better look at something on a bottom shelf. 

"Bunch of knives?" Ryuji asks.

"No," Akira says. "Daggers. And look--" Here, he launches into a mini-lecture that's at _least_ as enthusiastic as Ryuji's tour of the shop had been. The only difference is that he obviously knows what he's talking about, pointing out which parts of the designs make a given dagger easier to hold, more lightweight, or better to use.

"You know a lot about this stuff," Ann says.

Akira looks up at her, grinning. It's such a cheerful expression--excited with a hint of... of _mischief_ behind it--that it takes Ann a little bit by surprise. She thinks it's the first time she's seen him completely open. Not hiding behind his glasses, or schooling his expression into something expected. What had he said to her the other day? That he had a reputation for trouble back home? 

She can kind of see it.

"There was a metalworks shop in my hometown," Akira says, interrupting Ann's thoughts. "I spent a lot of time there, and I mean, you pick up on things."

This makes sense, in a _small town with nothing else to do_ kind of way. Ann had looked up Akira's hometown out of curiosity a couple days ago after Akira mentioned the name, and had found a Wikipedia article three paragraphs long and an official website that looks like it hasn't been updated since about 1999. 

(There had also been a few conspiracy type websites that talk about some kind of haunted TV station that only shows up on rainy midnights, and a... haunted fog? It's actually kind of the saddest sounding conspiracy Ann has ever read)

"Cool," Ryuji says. "You should get one."

"I think I probably will," Akira says.

He leans forward to study the selection more intensely. When he shows no sign of getting up any time soon, Ryuji bounces back to his feet, looks around until he catches Ann's eye, and asks (loudly), "So I was thinking, maybe we could get you a submachine gun?"

Ann sees the guy behind the counter look disbelievingly at Ryuji, then down at Akira, then up at the ceiling with a _what is wrong with the kids these days_ expression.

Ann squirms in acute, secondhand embarrassment, but--

Well, there's the Black Mask.

"Sounds good," she admits. "And... well, I saw some whips on the counter back there..."

She very carefully does not look in the direction of the shopkeeper.

-//-

_April 16_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Akira had not been expecting to find someplace like Untouchable when he left school with Ann and Ryuji after class, but here they are now. He has a weapon again, which is definitely going to be helpful when he goes back into the Pyramid with Futaba. And with Yusuke, of course, if-- _when_ \--Akira can figure out a new way to get around Madarame. Maybe Futaba can find his contact information--she can find everything _else_ on the internet, apparenty.

But a weapon makes a big difference in the metaverse. It'll mean he can attack without having to call a Persona, and he'll be able to last longer without running out of energy. And he's definitely going to have to go back there someday without Ann and Ryuji around, because there had been some other things that looked promising in terms of protection and defense. He just... doesn't want to have to explain to his friends why he's buying camo vests and things.

Although Ryuji had spent half an hour weighing up which model shotgun looked the most 'realistic,' and Ann had needed absolutely zero persuasion to buy a model submachine gun, so maybe his weirdness will fit right in after all.

He'd done his checking out first, and now he stands outside the shop, waiting for the others and watching the Velvet Room door halfway up the alley. Caroline is there, watching him right back.

Akira waves at her, because today's been a nice day--a lot nicer than the last few have been--and he's in a good mood. "Hello, Caroline," he calls.

She scowls back at him. "Watch yourself, prisoner!" she shouts back. 

There are times when Akira is angry at Caroline and Justine, because they're in the Velvet Room where Lavenza is supposed to be. And then there are times when he feels bad for them, because they're just kids after all, _young_ in a way that no other Velvet Room attendant he's ever met really is. They seem... small, and completely oblivious of the world outside the Velvet Room. 

Akira heads down the alley toward Caroline. 

"Do you need to see our master?" Caroline asks.

"Not right now," Akira says. "I was actually wondering if you and your sister wanted to look around Tokyo with me sometime."

She doesn't say anything, but her eyes narrow in suspicion, and search his expression like she's looking for the trap.

"I probably won't be much of a tour guide," Akira says, as if he can't feel the weight of her glare boring into him. "I barely know anything about the city myself. But I'm sure we'll find something to do."

Caroline still says nothing, and after a little while Akira hears his name called from behind him, and then Ann and Ryuji heading out of the shop. He gives a last look at Caroline, then heads back to meet them.

" _Maybe_ ," Caroline mutters, as he goes.

He grins.

-//-

Yusuke had stayed late after school (ostentatiously to get help from a teacher with a math lesson he hadn't understood, but really because he does not want to see his sensei right now), but after a while he runs out of reasons to stay, and walks out to meet his sensei and the car. They don't talk at all--they've already had their fight about Akira, last night. Neither of them had shouted, because neither of them is the kind of person that shouts when they're angry. Yusuke had felt himself getting cold, cold like ice, and Goemon rising up in his mind. His sensei had been very calm, called Yusuke _my boy_ a lot, and hinted that if Yusuke disobeyed him about seeing Akira, he'd be out on the street with his chances of an artistic career ruined forever.

So here they are. Sitting in the car in silence driving back toward the atelier. 

And that's when Yusuke sees them. A trio of three people, in the same school's uniform, one of whom is exactly the person Yusuke most wants to see. He sits bolt upright, muffling an exclamation.

"Yusuke?" his sensei asks. There's a pointedness to his question that means _this had better not be trouble_ and not _are you alright_. 

"I just saw--" do not say Akira, he reminds himself, pausing as he scrambles to think of a good way to end that sentence. Something else. Say you saw something else.

"You saw... what, exactly?" 

Three people. Akira, a boy with a dangerous look, and a girl with blonde hair.

"A muse," Yusuke blurts. Is that a good thing to say? It's _art_ , at least, and that is the one thing that is still safe to talk about with his sensei. As long as they avoid the plagiarism, the actual practice and production of art is something that Sensei still encourages. More so than ever, now that Yusuke is being pushed to finish something good before the show. The show. _Yes_. "I have been... struggling to find the inspiration to finish my painting for your show, Sensei," Yusuke says, eyes still fixed on the place where Akira and the other two had gone around the corner. "But so far I haven't found what I needed. But now..."

His sensei stares at him. Then he chuckles, a day's worth of anger and fighting dissolving just like that. "Pretty, is she?" he asks. 

Yusuke hadn't really noticed, and feels a little weird about the fact that his sensei is asking. 

Luckily, his vague blush seems to be enough confirmation because his sensei waves him out of the car. "Well," he says. "You might as well go after her, before she gets lost in the crowd."

Yusuke is out of his seat before his sensei has a chance to change his mind.

-//-

They're wrapping up their goodbyes at the train station when Ann becomes aware that someone is following.

"Are you sure?" Ryuji asks, turning around to look at the crowds behind them. "I don’t see anyone that looks suspicious."

"Positive," Ann says, and grabs him to stop him from twisting back around. "Please _don't_ be super obvious about looking."

"Who was it?" Akira asks. "What did he look like?"

"About our age, I think," Ann says. "Tall. Definitely looking at us."

Akira considers this. Then he asks, "Looking at _us_ , or looking at _you_?"

Ann flushes, and bites her lip for a second. "I'm not sure," she admits.

"Okay," Akira says. "Okay, then--how about this." He jerks his head toward a side hall coming up. "Me and Ryuji will wait there and see if this guy keeps following you. If he does, we'll come out and confront him."

It's a worse idea, Ann thinks, than keeping her head down and walking faster. That's what she usually does, if she's out too late and someone decides to notice her. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. She finds that she _likes_ Akira's idea a lot better. "Okay," she says, and the boys peel away. She keeps walking, trying to resist the urge to look back over her shoulder and see if someone's coming up behind her.

And then suddenly, someone _is._ She can feel a presence behind her, and she can see Ryuji and Akira out of the corner of her eye, moving suddenly out of their hiding place. Ryuji looks pissed off, but behind him, Akira is-- _smiling_.

Ann stops in her tracks and turns around to look directly into the face of a tall boy with dark blue hair, wearing an unfamiliar school uniform. He looks back at her with what seems like moderate embarrassment. 

"Sorry about this," he says. "But have you seen--"

"Yusuke!" Akira calls.

"Ah," says the boy, with a triumphant little smile. "Never mind, I found him."

Akira and Ryuji have caught up to them by now, and Ryuji looks between the other three. "You two know each other?" he asks.

"Yusuke," Ann says. "That's the name of the friend you went to see yesterday, isn't it?"

"Yea," Akira says. "Ann, Ryuji, this is Yusuke. We've known each other since we were kids. Yusuke, this is Ann and Ryuji. Ann's in my class, and Ryuji goes to the same school."

"It's nice to meet you," Yusuke says, politely. "Has Akira dragged you into any trouble yet?"

"Nah," Ryuji says. his protective anger seems to have eased a little bit, now that it's obvious Yusuke isn't some kind of a threat. "Akira's cool."

"Thanks," Akira says with a laugh. 

"Well, I'm sure it'll happen soon," Yusuke assures him.

" _Thanks_ ," Akira says again, with a little bit of sarcasm but no real venom. It has the sound of a very old joke, the kind of joke you have with people you've known for ages. "How did you get away from your sensei?" he asks Yusuke.

"Ah." Yusuke pauses. "I... may have told him I was chasing a muse for a painting. Since he needs me to finish a painting before his show in May so that he can take credit for it, he did not have a problem with this."

"Hang on," Ryuji says. "I feel like I'm missing some stuff here."

Ann catches the look Yusuke shares with Akira, and the little nod Akira gives in return. 

And then Yusuke gives his story. He explains that he's been living with his mentor, Ichiryusai Madarame since he was a child. He's been learning, ever since then, to paint. His eyes light up when he talks about the art, and once or twice Akira has to gently steer the conversation back onto the main point, and away from tangents about paints, or techniques. And then comes the part that Ann very much does not like.

"I've... suspected for a long time that Sensei has been taking his students' art and claiming it for his own," Yusuke says. "There used to be a lot more students--I remember the atelier being a lot more full when I was younger. But eventually they would argue with Sensei, or just... leave. And it took me a while, but I realized that a lot of the time what they were arguing about would be--that. Sensei taking their paintings. And now my art is getting good enough for Sensei to want to take mine, too. He wants one done before his big exhibition in May."

"But that's stupid," Ryuji says.

"It's very hurtful," Yusuke agrees. He takes a deep breath. "But it is... manageable."

Ann hasn't known him for half an hour yet, and already she doesn't believe that. 

"I'm more worried about being able to stay in contact with Akira," Yusuke says. "Since Sensei has decided he's a bad influence."

"Which reminds me," Akira says. "I have a new number. We should--"

"Yes," Yusuke agrees, and the two of them go into a little huddle to exchange numbers. Then there's a little bit of whispering, and Akira seems to be showing Yusuke something on his phone, but Ann doesn't really pay much attention.

"Yusuke," she says slowly.

"Yes?"

"I was just thinking--I know you were lying wen you said you were chasing a muse here. But if you wanted to tell your sensei that you're planning to paint me--" Because obviously if his sensei hates Akira, saying _he's_ the muse would be crazy, and Ryuji as muse is just not believable. "Do you think that would work as an excuse to get away from him and come meet us?"

"It might," Yusuke allows. "But he'd want to see some result, so I would have to actually paint you."

"Naked?" Ryuji asks.

The rest of them all stare at him.

"Why would you assume that?" Yusuke asks.

" _No,_ " Ann says.

Ryuji mumbles something that sounds like, _better not be naked_ , and Ann finds herself caught between feeling grateful that in his own weird way Ryuji is trying to protect her, and exasperated that he'd brought it up in the first place.

"I don't mind," she tells Yusuke. "And honestly..." She hesitates. Honestly, Yusuke's sensei sounds like a jerk, and she's happy to help get him away for a while, if she can.

"Then thank you," Yusuke says. "I'll come up with some excuse for Sensei about why we can't meet in the atelier."

He leaves a few minutes after that, having traded phone numbers with Ann and Ryuji as well. Apparently he's worried that his sensei will get impatient and come looking for him if he's gone for too long.

"Kind of a weird guy," Ryuji says, watching Yusuke disappear into the crowd.

"But nice," Ann adds quickly, because after all he's Akira's friend.

"Both," Akira admits.

And then they go their separate ways.

-//-

Futaba is alone in her room--as if she's ever anywhere else--when her phone buzzes with a text from Akira.

> **Akira**
> 
> Operation find Yusuke is a success!
> 
> I got his number this time too, and my friend Ann came up with an idea for how he can get away from his sensei once in a while
> 
> So I think we might be able to go back to the Pyramid soon, if you're ready to meet him?

Futaba stares at the screen for a long time. Is she ready? She's still sort of getting used to the fact that she has _Akira_ as a friend now, and she doesn't know Yusuke at all.

But if she says no, there's no way they're getting to the top of the Pyramid. And she'll never know what her Shadow is trying to tell her. She takes a deep breath, and texts back

> **Akira**
> 
> Ready

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been looking forward to write the Akira and Yusuke reuniting scene since... I don't know. I think since the first time Yusuke showed up in Inaba. Finally got to do it!


	7. April 23 - April 28

_April 23_

_After School_

-//-

> **Team Tomb Raider**
> 
> Checking one more time. Everyone still good to stop by the Pyramid after school?
> 
> **Alibaba:** Ready. And Sojiro is getting a delivery for the cafe later today, so he won't notice if we're both gone for a few hours
> 
> Perfect. Yusuke, are you good for today?
> 
> **Yusuke:** Yes. Sensei thinks I'm working on the painting of Ann
> 
> **Yusuke:** Why are we team tomb raider?
> 
> I assume because we're going through a Pyramid
> 
> **Alibaba:** Yes!

Akira takes a deep breath and shoves his phone back in his pocket as the train slides into the Yongen-Jaya station. He's a little bit nervous, honestly, about Yusuke and Futaba meeting each other. They've been texting plenty in the week since he finally got Yusuke's number (there had been a _lot_ of explaining to do after all), and they seem to be getting along fine. But Futaba handles texting a little bit more easily than face to face conversations, so that doesn't necessarily mean that she's going to be okay with Yusuke when they actually meet.

And it's not just because of the fact that they all need more friends that Akira _really_ wants it all to work out. The truth is that without Yusuke, he doesn't think they're ever getting through the Pyramid. He thinks that very probably, they've hit the limit of how much he can do on his own.

Yusuke is waiting for him just outside the Yongen-Jaya station, having made slightly better time than Akira has, probably because _he_ hadn't needed to dodge Yu and Naoto on the way out of school. He's leaning against a wall and looking around at the neighborhood with some curiosity, but straightens up when he spots Akira heading toward him. 

"You're really sure that you'll be okay sneaking out to come with us?" Akira asks, again.

"It's a little bit too late to change my mind now," Yusuke says firmly. "But I don't think Sensei is going to find out I'm here, anyway."

"So you're still telling him you're painting Ann?" Akira asks. He points the way toward the Sakura house.

"I _am_ still painting Ann," Yusuke says, as the two of them start walking. "She came to Kosei yesterday so we could get started on the painting."

"We?" Akira jokes. "Is Ann painting it with you?"

"No," Yusuke says. "Not exactly."

Akira raises his eyebrows. 

"A portrait is a collaboration between the artist and the subject," Yusuke says slowly. "Or at least... that's what I think. If you just paint what you see on the surface, you're missing what's important. If you're telling the subject how to pose, how to look, what to wear, then you're not letting them be themselves. If you're not letting them be themselves, then what are you really putting in your art?"

Akira stays quiet, listening. Yusuke has a way of looking at the world that is entirely different from the way most people see it, Akira included. When he listens to his friend, he learns.

"I know that Ann agreed to let me paint her because she's a nice person and she wants to help me avoid Sensei once in a while," Yusuke continues. "But that doesn't mean I don't want to do it right. If I just painted the Ann that I see, then even if it's her face on the canvas, I'm only painting myself."

"So what do you do instead?" Akira asks.

"It's... hard to explain," Yusuke says. "But it's about more than just seeing what she looks like. I want to know what she _is_ like." 

"I'm not going to pretend I understood all of that," Akira says. "But it sounds like it's going well?"

Yusuke nods. "I do feel bad about taking up Ann's time just so I can have an excuse to get away from Sensei. But she's being very nice about it."

"Yea," Akira agrees. "She's nice." 

"Strange, though," Yusuke says.

"Ann?" Akira asks. 

"The painting," Yusuke corrects, but then doesn't elaborate when Akira asks what's so strange about it. He kind of starts to open his mouth, then doesn't seem to know what to say, and just shrugs.

They're coming up on the Sakura house anyway, so Akira lets the subject drop. "This one," he says, gesturing, and leads Yusuke in through the gate, then around the side to Futaba's window.

"So this is where we have to be to get to the Pyramid?" Yusuke asks.

"We could be a _little_ farther away," Akira says. "I've looked at the app from inside the cafe, and you can still start navigation from there, but if you go to the station or farther out, the option disappears." He goes through the window first, spotting Futaba pressed into a tight huddle on her chair, which has been rolled all the way to the opposite wall, and gives her a reassuring smile.

She looks back at him, panicked.

"I wonder how far away you would have to be for other places," Yusuke says as he comes through the window too. He's a little less coordinated, and very nearly knocks over a shelf on his way through.

"Other places?" Akira asks.

"When you showed me the app, there was a place for navigation locations to be listed. You only had one, but why would there be room for a list if there weren't other places to go to?"

It's a good question. And Akira's thought about it before, he just... doesn't have an answer. "One thing at a time, I gu--"

"It should be possible to explore other distortions."

Futaba's voice is just a mumble, but both of them turn to look at her. 

"Distortion?" Yusuke echoes. "What does that mean?"

Akira hasn't known Futaba for very long, but he recognizes that she is trying her absolute best to not fold up into herself and hide. She is a shut in after all, and if she's decided to make an exception for Akira, she obviously hasn't made her mind up yet about Yusuke. He gives her his most encouraging look.

Almost reluctantly, Futaba unfolds herself from her chair, crosses the room, and pulls out a thick binder. "This is... my mother's research," she says. "The parts that seem like they're connected to all this, anyway."

"What do you mean?" Akira asks. This isn't the first time he's heard Futaba mention her mother, but he never really got the full explanation for what it was exactly that she did. 

"Cognitive psience," Futaba says.

Akira glances at Yusuke, and sees his own blank expression reflected back at him from his friend's face.

Both of them look back at Futaba, who manages a small smile that's really more like a smirk. It makes her look a little bit more confident than she had a few seconds before, anyway.

And then she explains about cognitive psience, haltingly at first and then more quickly as she gets into the flow, seeming to forget for the moment her earlier nervousness as she gets _really_ into her subject. A lot of what she says goes immediately over Akira's head, but eventually Futaba manages to bring the explanation back around to the metaverse. "Mom didn't use the same words as we do," Futaba says. "But you can just about piece it together.

"You can," Yusuke says. "Not us."

Futaba nods. By this point, it's fairly obvious that she _is_ the only one of the three that understands what she's saying, so there's no point arguing. "Well," she says. "What I mean--what I'm trying to say is that even though they didn't use any of the same words, they predicted something like the Pyramid. She lays the binder out on her desk, and Akira looks at the scrawled notes. He nods like he's still following. 

"Here," Futaba says, pointing. "Mom theorized that if a person's view of the world became distorted enough, if their thoughts, and... and their _heart_ were distorted, it could create a--"

Akira can almost hear the technical speak she's about to dive back into, and braces himself.

"It would create something like the Pyramid," Futaba says, catching his expression and apparently taking pity on him. "So that means there's probably lots of other places like this."

"The Pyramid exists because something about the way you see the world is distorted," Akira says, slowly.

Futaba--who has gradually gotten more animated and confident throughout her explanation--seems to shrink back into herself again. "I don't think that should be very surprising," she mumbles. "You've seen the way I am."

Akira frowns. She's afraid of the world outside her bedroom door, and that's sad and _wrong_ , but not in the way that Futaba seems to be suggesting that it is. "There's nothing wrong with you," he says quietly.

Futaba stares hard at the binder, closing it back up and shoving it farther back on her desk. She doesn't look at him at all as she says, "I'm _distorted._ That means that there is something wrong, actually."

"It means that you need help," Akira says. "Which is what we're going to do." He reaches for his phone. "We're going to catch up to your Shadow. She said something about distortions, didn't she?"

Futaba nods. "But..."

"So we catch up with her," Akira continues. "And we find out how to help you see things right again."

"We don't even know if that's possible," Futaba protests. "Mom had some theories, but she didn't _know_."

"It'll be possible," Yusuke says confidently. "I don't know how yet, but you know a lot about this, and Akira can find a way through just about anything if he puts his mind to it."

"Yea?" Futaba says. "And what about you?"

Yusuke shrugs. "I just want to help," he tells her.

And this, for Futaba, seems to be the right answer. She relaxes, and points at Akira's phone. "Well?" she says. "Aren't you going to do it already?"

-//-

_April 23_

_After School_

-//-

Futaba has been dreading the arrival of Yusuke Kitagawa since before she'd first admitted out loud to Akira that they need him to get through the Pyramid. Akira, she's pretty much okay with. She trusts him not to push her into situations she's uncomfortable with, and she's getting used to how... comfortable it feels to have a friend to text during the day.

But Yusuke is still unknown, even if he seems nice over text, and even if an exhaustive online search into his background hasn't turned up anything bad. It's just that Futaba doesn't know him yet, and she's... nervous.

(She's scared)

( _She is not scared_ )

(...she's scared, and she _hates_ that she's scared)

But now here they are, standing in the desert sun, all three of them. 

"This," Yusuke says solemnly. "Does not look anything like the TV World."

"It's even crazier inside," Akira says, with a little sideways smirk that makes Futaba-- _just_ for a second--jealous. There's something about the easy way the two of them stand together, completely comfortable here, looking cooler than Futaba will ever admit out loud, in their metaverse gear and unusual masks. It makes Futaba--still fighting her fear just for leaving her room, standing there in her usual tank top--feel a little out of place.

Then Akira heads for the Pyramid, gesturing for the other two to follow him, turning over his shoulder to tell Yusuke, "Me and Futaba have been figuring out some of how things work in here. We can show you around." 

He looks back at _her_ , and Futaba feels like she's a part of things again.

They immediately start making faster progress. Or, to be more accurate, they start to _make progress,_ and soon they're farther into the Pyramid than they've ever been before. 

The two of them together are really good, to Futaba's relatively untrained eye. They're comfortable fighting together, they've obviously done it before. Even if maybe there are still some Shadows they can't fight, Futaba notices that they're doing a lot less running away than they had been before. She appreciates that, on a basic _running is pretty terrible_ level.

Eventually, they make it something they can't just fight their way past, and the three of them stop and gather around the giant mural on the wall. 

"A puzzle?" Yusuke says. 

It is definitely a puzzle, but at least it's not a very tough looking one. Akira steps up to what's obviously the control panel, and starts fiddling with it. As he does, panels on the wall shift around. Futaba leans against the wall opposite, arms crossed, watching the picture form. For some reason that she doesn't fully understand, she has a bad feeling about it.

She's so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she doesn't notice that Yusuke has come to stand next to her until he asks, "Are you doing alright?"

Futaba tenses and gives him a searching, suspicious look. He looks back at her, expression open even behind his mask. 

"Fine," Futaba tells him.

On the opposite wall, the last puzzle piece slots into place, and Futaba stiffens at the same moment as a voice rings through the room, projecting with perfect clarity a memory that Futaba has replayed again and again in the privacy of her own mind.

Her mom's note. The men that had come and read it to her.

The voices don't speak for long--not like they had in reality, coming to see her during the first few days she'd spent under her uncle's so-called guardianship. They'd gone over everything in agonizing detail, reading the letter, asking her questions about her mom's mental state, about what their home life had been like, about whether Futaba's mom had ever seemed resentful of her responsibilities as a parent. They'd asked the questions over and over, for what felt like forever, until it seemed like the questions were burned into her memory.

"Futaba!"

She blinks back angry tears and looks up at two concerned faces. Akira, she realizes, has been trying to get her attention. "I'm fine," she tells them. She doesn't look at the mural on the wall. She can't. "We need to keep going, right?"

"Are you sure?" Akira asks.

"I think about this all the time," Futaba says, and her voice sounds flat to her own ears. "It's nothing new."

But it's lucky that Futaba's not the one fighting, because she's so distracted and lost in her own thoughts that she's barely aware of what's going on around her. She'd been telling Akira the truth, when she'd said that she thinks back to this all the time. 

She just hadn't mentioned that it still tears her apart every single time.

When they get to the second puzzle--because of course there is a second puzzle--Futaba gives it an angry look before retreating as far as she dares down the hallway to let Akira and Yusuke handle the puzzle solving.

She sits on the floor with her knees at her chest, and tries to pull herself back together. She doesn't want to think about the things that had happened back then, or how they're all her fault. She doesn't want anyone else to _know_ that it's all her fault...

A voice echoes from the walls, as clearly as if the speaker is standing right in front of her. Another memory Futaba can't ever forget. Coming this far away from the mural hadn't done anything at all to stop the sound. When she puts her hands over her ears and hunches over, that doesn't do anything either.

It's horrible. 

There are nights when Futaba will lay awake in bed, staring at her ceiling and hearing the echoes of those memories in her head no matter _what_ she tries to do to shut them out. Those are the nights that she lets herself cry for her mother (even though she doesn't deserve that, _does she_ , doesn't deserve to mourn when it's her fault, all her fault). But she lets herself cry because she can't hold it back, sometimes, because it's all so _much_ \--

She becomes aware, gradually, that someone else is standing nearby.

"There were some Shadows," Yusuke tells her, gesturing back, in the direction of the second puzzle. "Akira stayed to get rid of them, but we didn't think you should be alone"

"Because of the Shadows," Futaba mutters, trying to pull herself together.

"Well--no," Yusuke admits. "Because of what we heard."

From the mural.

"And because we thought you'd be upset by it."

He sits down, on the other side of the hall from Futaba, so that they're facing each other. Futaba wants to tell him that he's wrong, she's not upset, and even if he was, it isn't any of his business. She wants to run, to go home, shut herself in her room and never let anyone inside again, ever. She doesn't want to face whatever else this place is going to show her.

It's all been fun, so far. Dangerous too, but the Shadows seem more interested in Akira (and now Yusuke) with their Persona, than in Futaba standing behind them and unable to fight. She hasn't really feltscared so far. But now, with those voices, she _does_.

"Do you still want to do this?" Yusuke asks.

Futaba opens her mouth, hesitates, and then doesn't get a chance to answer as Akira comes running toward the two of them. 

"Sorry," he says, making a face. "But I think we should get moving before any more Shadows come after us."

Futaba avoids both their gazes as they walk (quickly but carefully, creeping their way past as many Shadows as possible) back to the Pyramid's main staircase. The way up isn't blocked, and Futaba eyes the stairs leading further up with more wariness than she wants to admit to. She doesn't know what else she's going to hear, but she knows what her nightmares sound like, and so she can guess. 

"We should stop for today," Akira says. "We've done a lot." 

(He's looking at her though, as he says it. Futaba wonders if he's thinking about the same thing she is--if he's asking himself whether she'll be able to handle another horrible memory)

"And we're almost out of bandages," Yusuke adds. Futaba feels a brief flare of gratitude for the way this immediately redirects the conversation away from her.

"I need a Persona with better healing," Akira says, making a face. "Except I'm already using spells to target weaknesses, so--I don't know. Maybe we just need better medicine." 

"Have you thought about talking to Yu?" Yusuke asks.

No, Futaba thinks. Please, no more people. Two is _enough_ , isn't it?

"No," Akira says, not quite looking at Yusuke as he says it. "It would be--I mean, it would make things easier..."

"He also wants to see you," Yusuke points out. "Almost as much as you want to see him."

Akira shoots him a complicated look, which Yusuke either doesn't see or pretends not to. Then Akira says, "I _can't_."

"Hmm," Yusuke says, noncommittally. 

Futaba knows enough of Akira's past by now--thanks mostly to his own stories of where he's come from--to understand why he's avoiding Yu Narukami. She _also_ knows Akira well enough to see that he's starting to waver on this. That maybe all this, the Pyramid and the Shadows and everything, is making him start to rethink things.

For now, at least, it doesn't look like he's about to reconsider. Futaba can't stop herself from feeling relieved.

"There's something we should talk about," Yusuke says, when they reach the bottom of the stairs. "Before we leave."

He's looking at her, Futaba realizes. So is Akira.

"I don't want to talk about--what we heard," she tells them. Because of course that's what they'd want to talk about, what else _is_ there?

"We should, though," Akira says. He's looking at her almost apologetically, which somehow makes it worse.

Futaba stops before they can get to the Pyramid entrance. Even if she _is_ reluctant to have this conversation, she'd much rather have it in here than outside in the blazing sun. "There's nothing to talk about," she says quietly. "My mom died. It was my fault." And a part of her has never stopped believing that she deserves to die, too, for that. "The things we're hearing are from--back then. That's all."

"How was it your fault?" Akira asks.

"You heard what the voices said," Futaba tells him.

"I want to hear it from you, though," Akira says. "Because I'm not going to pretend I understand everything you were saying about your mom's research, but if _anything_ at all here seems distorted--"

"But that's what really happened," Futaba insists. "And it really was my fault."

"That's not how it works," Yusuke says. "When a parent dies--that's not how it works." He gestures expansively. "No one here has any living parents. Do we?"

Futaba frowns. She'd known already that Akira's parents are dead. It's kind of the reason he's here in the first place. And she'd known that Yusuke is staying with someone he calls sensei, and not with a parent, but she hadn't really put the pieces together on that. 

"It's _hard_ ," Yusuke says. "I don't even remember my mother. But I know that sometimes it gets complicated. It..." He stops, and looks at Akira as if for help.

"It's easy to feel like it's your fault," Akira says quietly. "Or like your parents left you, or like--it feels like a lot of things. And sometimes you're kind of okay with it, and sometimes it hurts--" He shakes his head. "It's complicated. And it's easy to get... I don't know. Lost in how you're feeling. But that doesn't mean it was your fault."

Futaba opens her mouth to answer, although she doesn't know what exactly she's going to say. She wants to be angry, to _shout_ at them that they don't understand at all, and at the same time she wants to run out of the Pyramid and back to the real world so she won't have to talk to either of them.

But before she can get a word out, she sees someone standing behind the two of them, near the entrance to the Pyramid. Her Shadow stands there and watches without saying a word, and then after several seconds of very uncomfortable eye contact, just vanishes. Futaba feels _seen_ in a way she's not at all used to, and the initial, knee jerk reactions to what Akira and Yusuke are saying, of anger and fear, drain away. She actually _thinks_ about it.

 _It wasn't your fault_.

Just the idea makes her start shaking. 

Because what if it's true?

(It isn't, and it doesn't matter if some part of her deep down believes it, because _it's not true_ , it's all her fault and how dare she want to be happy, or normal, or _alive,_ when she'd caused her mom's death?)

-//-

_April 25_

_After School_

-//-

Yusuke meets Ann outside Kosei before their second painting session, and he takes her back to the same art room where they'd worked the first time. Kosei is a good school (in Yusuke's opinion), one of the best in Tokyo for gifted students. It is primarily focused on the arts--with a few exceptions, such as the prodigy shogi player--and so it's not unusual for students to stay after class to work on personal projects. Ann draws a few stares, but not as many as she might have in other places, and they both ignore it.

"Do you know how many more sessions this is going to take?" Ann asks as they get settled in.

Yusuke winces at the question. "I'm sorry for the trouble," he says. Having the excuse of painting Ann gives him plausible deniability and some extra wiggle room to get out of the house, and Yusuke desperately needs that right now--his sensei is willing to drive out with the car every afternoon and pick him up at the end of the school day, but he is apparently _not_ willing to sit around and wait until Yusuke's done working on his painting. On days when he meets with Ann (or days when he is _supposed_ to be meeting with Ann) he is allowed to stay out later, and take the train home. It gives him enough freedom to sometimes say that he is working here, and instead rush off to Yongen-Jaya to meet Akira.

"I don't really mind it," Ann says. "But there's..." She hesitates, playing with the end of one of her pigtails with a finger as Yusuke sets up his canvas. "There's something Ryuji and I are working on. We've been sort of taking a break lately, but we're going back to it soon, and it's--" There's a flicker on her face, of a storm of emotions. Fear and then determination, then finally an intense conviction that has Yusuke scrambling for a pencil before it's gone for good. 

(He might be painting Ann as an excuse to escape his sensei's supervision, but that doesn't mean he's not going to make it as good as he can)

(He couldn't have stopped himself if he tried)

"It's important," Ann finishes, quietly.

"I think we should only have to meet once more after this," Yusuke says. 

"Really?" Ann says. "I thought it would take longer."

"It won't be finished," Yusuke says. "But I should be done with the part I need you for by then." His hand hesitates as he reaches for his paints, considering color. Red, he decides. There should be some red.

"Can I ask you a question?" Ann asks after a while.

"Mmm-hmm," Yusuke says. His focus has shifted almost entirely to the world of the canvas in front of him. 

"The painting you're doing now," Ann says. "You're going to give it to your sensei and let him put his name on it. Right?"

For a second, Yusuke's hand stills. The real world intrudes on the world at the end of his brush.

"Yes," he says.

"But you don't want him to."

Yusuke looks up at her. "No," he says. "But there are... other things to worry about right now." Most importantly Futaba, and her Pyramid. It's only been a couple days since their trip to the Metaverse, but Futaba has been absolutely silent ever since they got back. He and Akira are hoping she just needs some time to work through things, but Yusuke is worried. She'd obviously seen and heard things in the Pyramid she doesn't like, but for now she's ignoring every text they send trying to assure her, or offering help. "Sensei is not the immediate problem," he tells Ann.

"What if _I_ don't want him to have his name on a painting of me?" Ann asks, raising her chin a little bit. "It's not right that he should take credit for something you're working so hard on."

Yusuke smiles a little. "Then I would have to find something else paint for Sensei's show next month," he tells her. "But thank you for being concerned."

Ann does not look reassured. "It's still not right," she says. 

Yusuke looks up at her expression, and nods as if a problem has just been solved. "Ah," he says. His hand moves a little more confidently across the canvas, adding details more quickly. "I think I understand now."

"Understand what?"

"How you and Akira ended up friends," Yusuke tells her. There's something in that stubborn expression on her face that makes Yusuke think Ann would not mind being dragged into trouble for the right reason. Like him. Like Nanako, back in Inaba, and like Futaba too. 

He means it like a compliment, and Ann seems to read as much from his tone or from his face or from _something_ , because she smiles. "I was kind of wondering how the two of _you_ got to be friends, actually," she says. 

"It's not that interesting," Yusuke tells her, which is a lie because Akira had accidentally pushed him into the TV World and then helped him awaken his Persona before they spent the rest of summer vacation fighting Shadows to save Akira's classmate. But that's not the kind of thing you just tell someone you've only known a week. "There's a traditional inn by where Akira grew up. It's relatively famous, and Sensei went there one summer for the hot springs, when I was too young to be left alone in Tokyo. The manager's daughter knew Akira, and since neither of us had any friends, she suggested Akira should show me the town." 

"You... aren't what I expected from a friend of Akira's," Ann says. "I mean--just because you seem so different."

"We share some common interests," Yusuke says.

"Does he paint too?" Ann asks.

"No," Yusuke says. " _Other_ interests."

He stops, and examines his work. 

There's something about the painting that doesn't make sense in his own head, even though he's the one painting it. He'd never intended to reproduce exactly what he saw in front of him, because _girl sitting in a high school art classroom_ isn't exactly the most interesting thing in the world to paint or to look at. So instead he's painted...

He's not sure exactly what it is that he's painted. Ann's definitely there. But there's something else. In the background, the margins, the space around her. A suggestion of color and shape that he can _almost_ see, if he closes his eyes and squints. And then a flash of fire. A streak of red across her face, like a mask.

But it's just Ann, part of him insists. All he's painted is Ann. 

More of Ann than what he can see with his eyes, maybe.

They finish for the day not too much longer after that, and when Ann asks if she can see how it's coming along, Yusuke makes up an excuse about it not being ready yet.

(But if he had shown her, she would have seen Carmen at once, would have recognized the mask she wears in Kamoshida's Palace, and she would have had a lot of questions)

(Yusuke would not have known the answers)

-//-

_April 26_

_After School_

-//-

The day after Yusuke's second painting session with Ann (an event Akira is aware of, both because Yusuke had sent him a rambling text about unexpected colors at two in the morning, and because Ryuji and Shiho, back at school now, had pressed Ann for details all the way through lunch), Akira decides that Futaba's been silent long enough. She hasn't returned a single text from either Akira or Yusuke, and judging by how distracted and short tempered Sojiro has been, Akira thinks she's been freezing him out too.

And he's worried. Which is why today--after his usual _avoid Yu and Naoto_ routine--he takes the train straight to Yongen-Jaya, and walks to LeBlanc.

Sojiro's the only one in the cafe when Akira comes in, and he looks up from what he's watching on TV to wave a vague greeting. 

"Hey," Akira says, taking a seat at the counter and dropping his bag on the floor. He glances at the bookshelf where Futaba's bug is still hidden, and wonders if she's watching. He's pretty sure she is. He's been in her room enough times now to notice that there's always a window open on her computer showing the feed from the bug.

For a while, Akira just sits on his stool, thinking, and occasionally shooting looks in Sojiro's direction. It's after about fifteen minutes of this that he looks at Sojiro and finds his temporary guardian looking right back at him.

"Have you done something wrong?" Sojiro asks, eyebrows raised.

Well yes, technically, in that he's been specifically told not to speak to Futaba. But even more technically, _no_ , because just because he's been told not to do something doesn't mean that doing it is wrong.

It just means he'll be in trouble if he's found out.

"I wanted to ask you something," Akira says, avoiding Sojiro's question entirely.

Sojiro gestures at him to continue. They've been getting along a little bit better recently, since Akira's started helping out around the cafe. But it's a careful peace, and Akira's wary of pushing it too far.

"How did you get to be Futaba's guardian?" Akira asks.

"Hey now," Sojiro says, straightening slightly and frowning at him. "I think I remember telling you to stay away from her."

"I have been," Akira says, lying through his teeth. "But I've just been wondering."

"Why?" Sojiro asks flatly.

Akira shrugs. "Why not?" he asks. "The only reason I'm here at all is because you're already _her_ guardian. And I never see her around--" Lies, lies, lies. "So I was just curious."

Sojiro gives him a glare for several seconds longer. Akira does his best to look innocent, but isn't sure how well it works. Most people know him too well for him to get away with _innocent_ for long, but Sojiro's only known him a month or so.

Eventually Sojiro shrugs. "I don't know how much there is to tell," he says, which Akira interprets as _I don't know how much I'm willing to tell you_. "I've already mentioned she's here because her mother died, and none of her relatives was capable of taking care of her."

"Did you know her mom?" Akira asks. "Is that why you ended up taking care of her?"

"Yea," Sojiro says. "Wakaba was one of the most impressive people I've ever known. She was smart. Worked hard. Loved her kid more than anything."

He's not looking at Akira, and from his tone, this sounds--painful, for him to be talking about. Akira gives him a few seconds before asking his next question.

"How did she die?" he asks.

"She stepped out onto a road," Sojiro says. "In front of traffic, and--there was an accident."

"An accident," Akira echoes.

"It was--tragic," Sojiro says, and Akira hears the depth of emotions packed into that one word. "It wasn't what Wakaba deserved."

"Nobody deserves that," Akira says quietly.

Sojiro gives him a searching expression, then shakes his head and deflates a little bit. "I guess it's only natural you'd be curious," he says. "Anyone would be. But it's not a question of someone... deserving it. You're right that nobody does. Especially not someone like her--she wasn't perfect. But she had her work that she loved. She had _Futaba_ , and that kid was her life." Sojiro sighs, and looks into the distance at something Akira can't see. "But it's just something that happened," he says flatly. "Not anyone's fault. Just..."

"Just something that happened," Akira repeats, letting his gaze drop again to Futaba's camera. He takes a risk, and asks, "So it wasn't Futaba's fault?"

"Now why the hell would you ask that?" Sojiro demands. His voice is more than just sharp now, it's _angry_. 

"Sorry," Akira says quickly. "Sorry I was just--"

"You don't know what you're talking about," Sojiro tells him. "How could it have been Futaba's fault? They were a family, and they loved each other, and sometimes when bad things that happen, they _aren't_ anyone's fault."

"I'm sorry," Akira says again.

Sojiro grunts, and that's pretty clearly the end of the conversation. "Come on," he says. If you have time to hang around asking questions about things that are none of your business, you have time to help me out back here. Put on an apron and give me a hand."

So Akira does, of course, and even without any customers in the cafe, Sojiro manages to find enough work for Akira to keep him busy for the next couple of hours. Akira's not _completely_ sure that it's supposed to be a punishment for asking insensitive questions about Futaba's past, but Sojiro does make him clean the bathroom three times before he's satisfied, so Akira guesses that yes, it probably is. And that seems fair--if he hadn't been so desperate for Futaba to hear from someone who had been there that _this is not her fault_ , he never would have brought the subject up. By the time he's gotten through the list of chores (and Sojiro apparently feels that Akira has been suitably chastised for his questions about Futaba), Akira has half a dozen missed messages waiting for him on his phone.

> **Team Metaverse**
> 
> **Alibaba:** I see what you're doing Akira
> 
> **Yusuke:** What's he doing?
> 
> **Alibaba:** Asking Sojiro about my mom
> 
> **Yusuke:**!!
> 
> **Yusuke:** What did he say?
> 
> **Alibaba:**...

Akira smiles at his phone like an idiot. 

"What's that look on your face for?" Sojiro asks.

"Nothing," says Akira, and then runs upstairs before his guardian can see anything.

> **Team Metaverse**
> 
> He said Futaba's mom loved her
> 
> It's not your fault, Futaba. If you don't believe us, at least listen to Sojiro. He was there. He knew your mom
> 
> **Alibaba:** I think maybe
> 
> **Alibaba:** I think maybe I want to believe that
> 
> **Alibaba:** But I just can't

It's the last text that comes through for a while. Akira sits on his bed and stares at his phone, thinking about distortions and Shadows and what that means for Futaba. He's not sure if anything they're doing is going to help her.

But it feels like it should.

His phone buzzes in his hand.

> **Team Metaverse**
> 
> **Yusuke:** So are you ready to go back?

Akira holds his breath

> **Team Metaverse**
> 
> **Alibaba:** Can you get away from your sensei tomorrow?
> 
> **Yusuke:** Yes I can
> 
> **Alibaba:** Then let's meet then

Awesome. Akira is halfway through a text responding to this when his phone buzzes again.

> **Team Metaverse**
> 
> **Yusuke:** So are we Team Metaverse now?
> 
> **Alibaba:** Well you complained when we were Team Tomb Raider
> 
> **Alibaba:** I thought maybe this would be better?
> 
> Eh
> 
> **Alibaba:** Mean
> 
> :D

-//-

_April 27_

_After School_

-//-

The Pyramid feels different to Futaba today.

She's not sure exactly why, exactly, except that she still hasn't gotten her conversation with Akira and Yusuke out of her head, the one they'd had over text last night. 

Futaba has believed for a long time now that she's--

Broken. Wrong. She'd been told that it's her fault that her mother is dead, and between the grief and the pain, she'd believed it. She'd had nightmares of her mom telling her she didn't deserve to live after what she'd done. Lately, she's heard her mom's voice--angry and hateful like it never had been in life--when she's awake, too.

And if a part of her wants to think that no, it's not true, that her mom had loved her and that she _hadn't_ done anything wrong, it's a part of herself that Futaba doesn't let herself listen to. She can't see herself as anything other than a monster.

But she has-- _friends_ , now. Actual friends, who think she's better than _she_ dares to think that she is. And Sojiro too, and--

And what if being here can help her? When Futaba lets herself think that maybe she might be wrong, and that her mom might not have hated her, that she might not be the reason that she'd killed herself, Futaba can feel herself _aching_ from the need for it to be true. 

If this is it, if this is the distortion in her heart, and she can fix it by going back to the Pyramid, by pushing through the Shadows and the voices and the memories, and following her Shadow to wherever it is that her Shadow wants her to be, then Futaba is going to do it.

There are more Shadows to fight today. Stronger Shadows. They're too much now for Akira and Yusuke to keep fighting them, so instead they stick to stealth, sliding from one hiding place to another and avoiding as many confrontations as they can. There's another mural puzzle, but this time Futaba stays with her friends instead of hiding on her own. When she hears her own voice, younger, begging her mom to spend time with her instead of working, Futaba stays perfectly still and doesn't say anything at all.

(She thinks--that's exactly how it was. What was _wrong_ with me? Why did I always have to bother Mom while she was working?)

(And then she thinks, this isn't how it was at all. I wasn't perfect, but Mom loved me)

And they climb higher, past another floor of the Pyramid, and then--

Then suddenly they're at the top, and Futaba's Shadow is standing there waiting for them.

"You made it," her Shadow says.

Futaba feels someone nudge her from behind, but isn't sure if it's Akira or Yusuke. Either way, they're right. Futaba walks toward her Shadow. "You wanted me to see all this," she says. "Right?"

"You're not letting yourself remember how things really happened," says her Shadow. "And you know you're not."

"Maybe," Futaba says. "I--I _want_ to believe you..."

There are footsteps behind her. Akira and Yusuke.

And Futaba has her friends behind her, and her Shadow in front of her, and all of them are waiting and watching to see what she's going to do. Around them is the Pyramid, bearing down on them, and the _weight_ of it, the pressure of everything they've been through, all those Shadows, all those traps and puzzles and defenses, everything _she'd_ put in their way to stop herself from realizing how distorted she's let her thinking get--

It's all too much, suddenly.

And Futaba doesn't believe it anymore.

"I guess I must have known," she says quietly, to her Shadow. "Because you did. And--you're me."

And that's when she feels the mask on her face.

-//-

Akira lets out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. 

Futaba's going to be okay.

-//-

Summoning Necronomicon feels like figuring out how to be whole again. It feels like finding a safe place, like a jolt of energy, like suddenly gaining a whole new set of senses, all at once. Futaba reaches out and she _knows_ things that she hadn't known a few seconds ago. She's hyper aware of Akira and Yusuke nearby, of their Persona, of how hurt they are, and how much energy they still have left. She knows where the Shadows are nearby, but that none of them are close enough to be interested in the three of them yet. She knows...

"Guys?" Futaba says.

"Yea?" Akira says. He's still smiling, but Futaba can feel the first, heady rush of excitement draining out of her as she cranes her neck upward for a glimpse of what she already knows is coming.

"You might want to get ready for a fight," Futaba tells them, just seconds before something with her mother's face comes crashing out of the sky. Yusuke jumps and Akira curses and Futaba's heart rate skyrockets as she stares at the thing. She's afraid, because her Persona is telling her that the thing in front of them is stronger than any of the Shadows in the Palace below, and stronger than Akira and Yusuke put together, probably. 

But she's also _angry_ , because the thing with her mother's face, the Sphinx, the _Cognitive Wakaba Issshiki_ as her Persona knows to call it, is shouting horrible things at her.

And Futaba knows--now--that they are not true things.

She senses on instinct that she's not going to be able to help fight this thing. That's not the kind of Persona that Necronomicon is, but as her friends leap into the fight for her, Futaba grits her teeth and does what she can to help them. She can't fight, no. But she can keep track of the Sphinx when it goes rocketing upward, so that Akira and Yusuke won't be caught flat footed when it slams back down again. She can track weaknesses, and the Sphinx's health, and her friends'.

But she can't do anything, the first time Yusuke is caught off guard by a critical attack and goes down. She can't do anything about the attack that comes immediately after that, either, that catches Akira and Yusuke together, leaving Akira winded and Yusuke unconscious. Akira gets him back up with _recarm_ , but that uses up almost all of the energy he has left, and in another minute they both go down, together this time.

Everything in Futaba goes cold all in a second.

They should have run the first second the Sphinx came at them. With only the three of them, with Futaba not a fighter, with the strength Akira and Yusuke have, _they were never going to win this fight._

And she should have known that.

What happens now? With no one left to continue the fight? The Sphinx raises one enormous hand--paw-- _hand_ , ready to swat down again at the two boys, and Futaba realizes that this is going to have to be her. She's going to have to do something, even though she can't fight, because if she doesn't then--

She drops out of the UFO-like manifestation that Necronomicon has taken, and runs toward the fight. "Stop!" she shouts. " _Stop!"_

And to her own amazement, the Sphinx... pauses. Hand still up in the air, she looks down at Futaba.

"You're not my mother!" Futaba shouts up at her. She stops, panting a little from her mad dash, planting herself firmly between the other two. "This isn't what she was like! My mom--" She makes a little noise, and thinks back to what she'd seen the day before. The feed from her bug in LeBlanc, listening to Sojiro telling Akira about what her mom had really been like. Saying things that Futaba had allowed herself to forget. "My mom loved me," Futaba tells the cognition. "You're just--" 

The ground under her suddenly _shakes_ , but Futaba keeps her footing. "You're a distortion of what she really was," she says. "You're _my_ distortion. This whole place is, and--" 

And there's a mask on her face, and a Persona in her head, and her friends on the floor because they'd tried to _fight_ for her.

"And I'm not going to let things like this exist in my heart anymore!" Futaba says, _shouts_ , and it's like the words are a weapon all on their own because the Sphinx falls back, howling in pain.

There's a beat of absolute stillness, and silence. Futaba can hear herself breathing hard, and under it all something fierce and determined balling up inside her. She waits, to see what's going to happen, and what else she needs to do to protect her friends. For what feels like forever nothing happens, and then, all at once, the Sphinx shimmers, and shrinks, and _fades_ , and for just a second before it flickers out of existence, Futaba sees her mother the way she was. The way she _really_ was.

And she looks proud.

"I love you, Mom," Futaba says quietly.

The Pyramid gives a lurch and throws Futaba off her feet. The whole place is falling apart, and a part of Futaba's mind is thinking that of course it makes sense it can't stay standing, this place is her heart's distortion, and she is _done_ with thinking thoughts like that. It's good that this place is falling to pieces. It's good that it's not going to exist anymore.

Another part of her mind is wondering what happens to her and her friends if they're still there when the Pyramid goes.

"Akira!" She shakes him, and luckily that seems to have an affect. His eyes half slide open, squinting muzzily at her. "The Pyramid's going to collapse," Futaba blurts. "Can you get Yusuke up?"

"Wha--" He shakes his head and forces himself up, wincing. " _Shit_. Where's the--"

"Gone!" Futaba says. "I'll tell you later, but we need to _go_!"

Akira gets Yusuke on his feet, and then all three of them start running. It might just be Futaba's imagination, but it feels a little easier now than it had half an hour ago, before her Persona. She feels real, and all of this does _not_. They half run and half fall down the long central staircase of the Pyramid, and someone manages to get the app out what feels like just in time. They fall back into Futaba's room in the real world in a tangle of limbs. There's a thump and then a crash as Yusuke rolls into one of Futaba's pile of stuff and it comes down on top of him.

Futaba lies on the floor, staring up at her ceiling, feeling the weight of Necronomicon buzzing in the back of her mind, feeling--

Feeling actually pretty good.

"Everyone okay?" Akira asks, pulling himself up to a sitting position. "Futaba?"

"Great," Futaba says.

"Yusuke?"

"Ow," says Yusuke. 

Futaba sits up too, and takes a good look at the two boys. Then she winces. _She_ doesn't have a mark, because she hadn't done any fighting, but both of them are... well, both of them look like they've just been beat up by a giant monster. Futaba doesn't know how observant Yusuke's guardian is, but Akira is definitely going to have problems when Sojiro sees him. 

"Thank you for everything you both did," Futaba says.

Akira shakes his head. "You're the one that talked your Shadow into becoming your Persona," he says. "And you're the one who... I don't actually know how you got rid of the Sphinx."

Futaba shrugs. "I haven't been myself for a long time," she says. "I haven't been thinking about things clearly. I just... recognized that."

Akira grins at her, and for a second his face reminds Futaba of the proud look on her mom's, as the Sphinx faded away. 

"The Pyramid is gone," Yusuke says, and Futaba looks over to see that he's sat up and is looking at his phone.

"We saw it collapse," Akira points out.

"But now it's not on the app either," Yusuke says, holding his phone out so they can both see. 

"Good," Futaba says firmly. "I don't ever want to go back there."

She thinks about this. About how it had felt to call her Persona, to help in a fight, to be able to stand with her friends against something that's wrong. Then she says, "But if we could find another way into the metaverse--if there were other fights..."

She doesn't want to go back to the Pyramid. But she feels in her gut that _something_ bigger is just starting.

"Speaking of which," Akira says, an odd note in his voice. "Yusuke, can I see your phone again for a second?"

Yusuke hands it over, and Futaba leans slightly to one side to see too. 

"The Pyramid's gone," Akira says. "But there's another location still listed here."

 _Ichiryusai Madarame,_ Futaba reads over his shoulder. _Museum. Atelier._

"After we talked about distortions last week," Yusuke says slowly, not quite meeting anyone's eyes. "I started thinking about--other people. Who might--well. Might be distorted." He looks uncomfortable. "I haven't been there, I just checked the name. But if either of you would be willing to help me see if there's anything we can do, I would--"

There's a long pause. Futaba thinks about how Yusuke has to lie and sneak around just to get away from his guardian for a few hours a week. About what she's heard about the plagiarism. 

"I'd really appreciate it," Yusuke finishes quietly.

"Of course we'll help," Futaba says. 

"We're friends," Akira agrees.

They are, Futaba thinks with a little warm glow. You don't--you _can't_ go through something like what they've been through and not be friends. 

-//-

_April 27_

_Evening_

-//-

Akira doesn't think he's ever felt as sore before as he does now. That fight with the sphinx had been rough. Way too rough, definitely, for him and Yusuke to take on alone. If they'd been stronger, if there had been more of them--maybe things would have been different.

But it hadn't, and now he'll be hiding bruises for days.

He lingers in Futaba's room for a while, because he doesn't want to go back to LeBlanc until after Sojiro leaves for the day. Of course, being here when Sojiro gets home would also be a problem, so he and Futaba sit in her room with one eye on the feed from her bug, and they talk for a while.

Futaba seems... tired, which is normal for someone that's just awakened a Persona, so Akira's not too worried. But she seems happy too, or relieved, or something. Like a weight's been taken off her shoulders.

After a while Akira says, "Could I ask you for a favor?"

"Sure," she says. "What?"

Akira chews on the question for a while. It's not that he doesn't know what he wants to say, it's that he's still not entirely sure he wants that he wants to ask.

But it's been long enough, and he and Yusuke hadn't been strong enough today. And sure, they have Futaba now, whose Persona--as far as Akira can tell--is something more like what Rise's had been. That'll help, probably a lot. And he and Yusuke can and _will_ get stronger.

It just feels like they might be in a little bit over their heads right at this exact second, and if they're going to do this all over again, then maybe it would be a bad thing to ask for some help, or advice, or something.

"I want to talk to Yu," Akira says slowly. "You know, I've mentioned him."

"Yep," Futaba says. "He's the one you're not supposed to be in contact with because of your probation."

"Right," Akira says. "And I don't want to just walk right up to him after school, because then _I'd be walking right up to him after school,_ and I just--" He sighs. "The arrest sucked, Futaba. I don't want to drag people I care about into anything like that, and honestly I don't want to get into any more trouble with cops like that."

He takes a deep breath. "So I want to talk to him, but I want to do it in a way that won't get us caught. So I figure, if anyone can get his number..." He glances over Futaba's shoulder, at where her computer is busily running... _something_. He understands basically nothing that she does on there, but has a pretty clear idea that a lot of it isn't strictly legal.

"Sure," Futaba says. "I can get his number and there's plenty of ways to encrypt messages and phone calls, if you're feeling _really_ paranoid."

He's not sure if she's teasing. He's also not sure if it's something he needs to be worried about, but he doesn't know that it _isn't_. "It's not paranoid if you've actually been arrested and threatened for something you didn't even do," he says out loud.

Futaba does not argue this. "Okay," she says. "I can get that set up for you before the weekend. Is that okay?"

"Perfect," Akira says. "Thank you, Futaba."

"Ask me something hard next time," Futaba says, and Akira laughs. So that's it. He's going to be able to talk to Yu again. Or text him, anyway. He's not sure if there's anywhere at all in Tokyo where he'd actually feel safe meeting with Yu in person right now.

(He's been thinking about this for a while. Every single time he has to walk past Yu to leave school)

(And even if he's still feeling nervous, and a part of him is still upset, deep down in his gut he is so excited about the idea of getting to talk to Yu again)

The feed on Futaba's computer shows Sojiro heading out of LeBlanc, so he says his goodbyes and heads for the window. 

Outside, he pauses on the sidewalk and looks around at the neighborhood. It's dark by this point, but there are still people out on the street. Commuters heading home, an elderly couple shopping at the supermarket, a trio of women gossiping together. There's the distant sound of traffic, and farther away still the subway, but it's quieter here than anywhere else Akira's been in Tokyo.

It's starting to feel like home, he realizes. Not like Inaba is home, but--Yongen-Jaya is somewhere he where he feels comfortable. He doesn't know the city, but he's getting to know this one particular neighborhood. The side streets, the supermarket, the local batting cage. The same faces he passes on his way to school in the morning, the neighbors and the regulars at LeBlanc All the different ways to get between LeBlanc and the Sakura house without Sojiro spotting him. He even has the local train schedule memorized, _finally_. 

And he has a friend here, a friend who isn't _hurting_ anymore, and he's going to talk to Yu soon.

It's been a good day, apart from almost being killed by a sphinx, but they'd gotten out of that okay.

Akira takes three extra turns, passes the train station, lingers for a while at the end of the street, and heads up the road to LeBlanc just as Sojiro is locking up for the night.

"Oh," his guardian says when he spots Akira. "There you are. I was starting to wonder if you were coming back at all tonight."

"I went and saw some friends after school," Akira half-lies. He had been with Yusuke and Futaba after all. 

"Not getting into trouble?" Sojiro asks.

Akira grins, and ducks his face so that the bruises the Sphinx had left on him aren't as visible in the spotty streetlight outside the cafe. "No," he lies. "No trouble at all."

-//-

_April 28_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Every single day, Yu wakes up and wonders if this is the day he's going to stop making his trips down to Akira's new school. So far, although he _knows_ Akira is aware that he (or Naoto, or both of them, depending on their schedules) is out there waiting, nothing has happened. Akira will sometimes give them a _look_ on his way past that makes Yu think that maybe he's starting to think about talking to them, but so far he hasn't. Usually, he'll stay late, or walk out with friends like some kind of guard. 

(Yu keeps a close eye on them--he learns to recognize the boy that had shouted at him a couple weeks ago, and the blonde girl, and the dark haired girl with the bruises)

It's obvious that Akira doesn't want him there, and on one level, Yu can reluctantly admit that maybe he has a point. Under normal circumstances, he would not have been so eager to flirt with breaking the terms of Akira's probation, and potentially getting him into more trouble than he already is. But normal has already flown out the window for this year--there's a Velvet Room door in Shibuya, guarded by a someone that isn't Lavenza but probably should be, if Yu understands anything about the way the Velvet Room works. Something is going to happen this year, or has already started to happen, maybe, and Yu doesn't know how bad things are going to get, yet.

But he knows that Akira is going to be right in the middle of it, and that means he's not going to give up on making sure he knows where to come for help. 

Even if, so far, Akira hasn't done anything but stubbornly ignore him and Naoto.

So far, Yu reminds himself. Akira hasn't been willing to talk to them _so far_ , and eventually he'll want to, and Yu is going to make sure he's around when he does. So today, like every other day recently, Yu leaves his college campus after his classes have ended for the day, gets on the train, and heads for Shujin. He has to transfer trains once, at Shibuya station, and he pulls out his phone to fiddle with it while he waits.

As soon as he does, the blue butterfly app opens all on it's own. 

Yu frowns. He's been meaning to find a way to get that uninstalled, but with everything else going on, he just hasn't had the time. 

"Come on," he mutters, tapping at his screen to try and back out of the app. "Close already..."

The app very definitely does not close, and all that Yu manages to do is open up some kind of submenu.

 _Searched Locations,_ it says. _Mementos._

"Mementos?" Yu reads aloud. What does _that_ mean? More confused than curious, he taps at the word to see if it'll tell him anything else about where this Mementos is. Whatever it is.

_Begin Navigation?_

Sure. Why not. Maybe it'll at least get him to a screen where he can exit out of this app. And then he should _really_ try to figure out how to get this thing uninstalled. Maybe a factory reset.

He taps yes, and then--

The world shifts and dissolves around him, a disorienting transition away from the familiar Shibuya station and into something red and dark. Yu puts a hand out for balance, bracing himself against a nearby pillar. Then he sees the thick, red veins crawling up it, and stops his hand before he can touch it.

"Oh," a voice says behind him. "I don't think you're supposed to be here."

He turns, taking in what seems to be a distorted version of the same subway station he'd been standing in a moment ago, and sees a Velvet Room door behind him. There's a girl standing just outside, looking up at him with vague, but polite, interest. She's not the same girl Yu had meet just off Central Street, which is kind of a relief because that girl had definitely not liked him. Maybe he'll have more luck at getting information from from this one.

"I'm not really sure where here is," he says, although that's not completely true. He thinks he has at least some idea, because Izanagi is at the edge of his mind, ready to be called in a way he _hasn't_ been in years. He twitches the fingers of one hand, and feels the edges of a card there, half real and half not. He stops short of fully drawing it and calling out his Persona. It's enough to know it's there.

"It's called Mementos," the girl says. "Who are you?"

"My name's Yu Narukami," Yu tells her. "You're an attendant of the Velvet Room, aren't you?"

"A warden," she corrects softly. "Not an attendant."

"A warden?" Yu echoes. The word feels wrong, but he forces his initial surprise off his face. Keep calm. _Learn_ something. "For Akira?"

"For the prisoner," she tells him. "Yes."

A little part of Yu goes cold at the word. The Velvet Room is supposed to be a safe place for Akira, the way it always had been for Yu when he was in Inaba. It's not supposed to be just another prison for him, after everything that had happened to him. Why would Igor have let this happen? 

"What's your name?" he asks, easing himself down onto the floor so that he's closer to the same level as the unnamed warden. The floor is cold and suspiciously wet. Yu tries not to think about what he might or might not be sitting on.

"Justine," says the girl.

"It's nice to meet you, Justine," Yu says. "Do you mind if I ask more about this place?"

"You really aren't supposed to be here," she tells him again.

"Why not?" Yu asks.

"It's dangerous," Justine says.

"I can take care of myself."

One of her eyes is hidden behind an eyepatch, but the other studies him with an intensity that reminds Yu strongly of Margaret. "You can," she says, with some surprise. She relaxes, slightly, and the intensity of her gaze fades a bit into curiosity. 

Yu nods. "And I can take care of Akira too," he says. "Or at least, I want to try."

They watch each other for a few more moments, as Justine seems to be thinking this all the way through. Yu doesn't say anything, just waits, muscles tense. Then finally, Justine nods. "I think," she says quietly. "That visitation with family and friends is an important part of any prisoner's rehabilitation."

Yu's smile is a little bit strained. "I don't think Akira's done anything that he needs rehabilitating from."

"My master says he has," Justine says.

"And what is that, exactly?" Yu asks. "What has he done that's so wrong?"

Justine hesitates. Her eye slides away from Yu's face, and she takes a little bit too long to say, "That's none of your business."

She doesn't know, Yu decides. What that means, exactly, he isn't sure, but she's not as informed about what's going on in the Velvet Room as it feels like she should be. Margaret had always seemed like she knew exactly what was going on back in Inaba. And Yu had never really gotten a chance to know Lavenza too well, but Akira had apparently been convinced that she knew basically everything. Justine doesn't seem to have quite that same level of knowledge.

"Alright," he says slowly. "Then I won't ask any more questions about that." He's not sure what's going on here, but making enemies isn't going to help. Especially when Justine doesn't seem to have the answers he's looking for. "What about this place? Can you tell me about--" He looks around at the vein filled subway station, gesturing to the whole of it. " _This_?"

She seems to be thinking about this, considering whether he can be given the information he's asking for.

"It's called Mementos, right?" Yu asks. "But what is it, exactly?"

"It's a place for the collective unconscious," Justine says at last. "The Palace of everyone's hearts."

Yu studies her. He's not sure what all that means, and after a little while, he says as much.

Justine gives him a small smile. "In practical terms," she says. "It is a place where Shadows live."

"Ah," Yu says, with some relief. Shadows are something that he does understand-- _the Palace of everyone's hearts_ sounds ominous, and like something he's going to want to learn about as soon as he possibly can, but right now at least he can understand Shadows. "That's--" He looks around again, his eyes landing on the dark escalator leading downwards. "They'd be somewhere down there, then?"

"Yes," Justine says, and then doesn't explain anything else.

Yu nods, and then doesn't say anything for a few minutes. He's thinking through what to do next, weighing his options, trying to figure out a next step. It feels very clear to him that he actually is not supposed to be here. When he'd fallen into the TV World as a high school student, it had felt intentional and guided. There had Igor and Margaret in the Velvet Room to cryptically hint at what he was supposed to do, and nudge him down the right path. This doesn't feel the same--it really feels like he's wandered into someone else's story--Akira's story, maybe--and now he doesn't know what his next step is supposed to be.

He's going to have to think about this more.

"Thank you," he says, standing up again. "I known you didn't have to tell me any of that, so I really appreciate it." Stay polite, he tells himself. Don't push your luck, don't stay too long--figure out the next step, and _then_ come back here for more answers. And since Justine still seems reluctant to say too much, it might be better to leave now before she gets fed up with him being here. He turns to go, pulling out his phone to take another look at the app. That's what had gotten him here in the first place, so it makes sense that it would probably be the way out, too.

Behind him, a small voice says, "I..."

He turns back around, and sees Justine looking up at him. He waits, and eventually she says. "I very much want to see the prisoner complete his rehabilitation." She frowns, then corrects herself. Her voice is soft, almost as if she's speaking to herself instead of to Yu. "No," she says. "I want to see him _happy_."

"So do I," Yu assures her. 

"I know," Justine says slowly. "I don't know _how_ I know, but I do."

Yu doesn't answer this, which Justine--apparently lost in her own thoughts--doesn't seem bothered by at all. He takes a few steps away, looks back down at his phone, and examines the unknown butterfly app. There's a new prompt there, right in the middle of the screen.

_Return to the real world? [Y/N]_

He taps yes. 

The sounds of Shibuya Station burst back into existence around him, as Mementos melts away and the real world returns. Yu stumbles as he had when he first got to Mementos, but is relieved to be able to actually put his hand out to steady himself this time without touching anything disgusting.

He hadn't been in Mementos long, according to the clock on his phone, but long enough that he's missed the train he'd been planning to catch. The next one will be too late to be there when Akira gets out of school, which is annoying but... probably not his biggest problem right now. Yu rubs his hand through his hair, thoughts still scattered from today's... _adventure_ , and he tries to pull himself together enough to decide what to do first. Call Naoto, maybe? She and Rise are the only other members of the Investigation Team in Tokyo, so--

A text flashes onto his phone's screen suddenly, from someone Yu doesn't know. The incoming message has a name associated with it but no number, which is strange. Yu opens it, mentally bracing for more weirdness because it's just been that kind of a day.

> **Alibaba**
> 
> You don't know me, but I'm a friend of Akira's
> 
> He wants to talk

And Yu feels relief wash over him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so happy that all the rest of the Persona awakenings in this fic are going to be of the violently-tearing-a-mask-off variety and not the confronting-your-Shadow-about-deeply-held-insecurities kind, because the Shadow ones are sooooo much harder to write.


	8. April 28 - May 1

_April 28_

_Evening_

-//-

> **Alibaba**
> 
> You don't know me, but I'm a friend of Akira's
> 
> He wants to talk
> 
> Who are you?
> 
> I just said. I'm Akira's friend
> 
> He wants to talk, but he's nervous about the fact that you keep coming to his school where anyone can see you
> 
> He asked me to set up a good way for you to talk, so I'm going to send you a link to a secure chat
> 
> Hang on, I have a better idea
> 
> No offense, but you you haven't exactly been all that good at this so far
> 
> I didn't exactly have any other way of getting in touch with him
> 
> But if he's ready to talk, I think I actually know a good place to meet
> 
> ...
> 
> Where?
> 
> Ask him if he has an app on his phone called the Metanav
> 
> And if he does, tell him to search Mementos

"But how does he _know_ about any of that?" Futaba demands, waving her phone in Akira's face. 

She's already read him the whole conversation--it's the first thing she'd done after frantically texting him that he needs to _come over right away after school no excuses--_ so Akira doesn't bother looking at the phone now. "I don't know how he knows," he says. "But he's Yu and he knows stuff. He's probably got the Metanav too."

"How?" Futaba demands.

"I don't know," Akira repeats. "How did _we_ get it?" Since he more than suspects that it has something to do with Igor, who Futaba knows nothing about, this is a slightly unfair question. At least it seems to calm her, a little.

"Okay," Futaba says, sitting back down on her chair with a _whump_. "Fine. Fair point." She fiddles with her phone for a second, then looks up at him and asks, "This guy's really important to you, isn't he?"

Akira says, "Yu's like my brother."

Futaba gives a drawn out sigh, and doesn't look significantly less worried. "Then I guess I'll have to give him a chance," she says.

"You'll like him," Akira tells her, then decides to change the subject. "So did you search Mementos on the app yet?"

"Yea," Futaba says. "It showed up as a hit right away. I'm just not sure where we'd go in from."

Akira pulls out his phone too, and searches Mementos. Sure enough, it comes up immediately, but the _Start Navigation_ option is grayed out and inaccessible. "You could ask Yu," he says.

" _You_ could ask Yu," Futaba says.

Akira hesitates. He'd honestly rather be face to face with Yu the first time they talk. Futaba reads this on his face, and rolls her eyes. 

"You know you're making this more difficult than it has to be," Futaba says.

"Yes," Akira admits.

"I'll ask him."

She texts Yu, with Akira watching from the other side of the room and trying not to feel like he's being a small child about all this. She also thinks to ask when he wants to meet with Akira, which is how they settle on Friday, after school, at Shibuya Station. Or in Mementos, technically, which it turns out can be accessed _through_ Shibuya Station. 

"Tomorrow," Akria says, when Futaba reports this back to him. 

"Are you going to go by yourself?" Futaba asks.

"I think so," Akira says. "I want you to meet him, and I don't see why Yusuke wouldn't want to see him again, but this first time is just..." He hesitates. "I don't know. I want to see him on my own."

-//-

"Are you going by yourself to meet Akira?" Naoto asks Yu. "Or do you want us to come with you?"

"I'll come alone," Yu says. "It doesn't seem that dangerous here."

Yu, Naoto, and Rise--the three members of the Investigation Team currently in Tokyo--had gathered at Shibuya Station as soon as Yu finalized plans with the mysterious Alibaba to meet with Akira. Naoto looks skeptically around at their current surroundings before raising a pointed eyebrow at Yu.

"Alright," Yu admits. "It does _seem_ dangerous, but there's no Shadows in this entrance area."

"Is that right, Rise?" Naoto asks.

Rise, who has been standing by the stairs with her eyes closed and her Persona hovering just behind her, turns. The Persona vanishes, leaving Rise standing alone, wearing a slightly worried expression. "I don't think the Shadows will come up to this level at all," she says. "And the ones below here wouldn't be a threat for us."

"What about to Akira?" Yu asks. The last time any of them had really needed to worry about fighting strong Shadows had been back in Inaba, and Akira hadn't been strong enough to keep up with the rest of them then. It's been five years, of course, but there hasn't been too much opportunity since then for Akira to practice and improve. "Are they strong enough to be a threat to him?"

"No," Rise says, shaking her head. "He should be fine with these Shadows too. They're... maybe about as strong as the Shadows in Yukiko's Castle."

And Yu knows for a fact that Akira can handle the castle by himself, so that's a good sign.

"But you still look worried," Naoto says.

"Well... the Shadows near here aren't very strong," Rise says. "I can sense weak Shadows on the two levels right under us, but this place goes a lot deeper, and I don't know how strong the Shadows might be the farther you go."

"How deep is it?" Yu asks.

"I don't know," Rise says. "There's something blocking me from seeing deeper than a couple levels, _and_ the layouts keep changing, _and_ they're huge!" She frowns. "Honestly, I think you'd need a car or something just to get around in here. You'd never make it anywhere on foot."

"That's worrying," Naoto says, crossing her arms. "If this is anything like the TV World, then this place existing could end up being a threat to all of Tokyo. And... well, there are a lot more people here. If something like the fog from Inaba was to come to Tokyo, it could have very big consequences."

"You think it's dangerous?" Rise asks.

"I think it could be," Naoto says. "And it looks like you do, too."

Yu takes this in, thinking. Over Naoto's shoulder, he sees Justine watching him. Neither Naoto nor Rise had been able to see her when they came in, which hadn't really surprised Yu. He and Akira have always been the only two that can see the Velvet Room's door, and there's no reason to think that's going to change now just because they're in Tokyo instead of Inaba.

Which doesn't mean that it's not a _little_ unnerving, being stared at by someone that no one else can see. He looks back at her, and wonders what she's thinking.

"So... what do we do?" Rise asks, and of course the question is aimed right at Yu, because he's been the leader for five years now. He's the one who has the answers to questions like that, who decides what their plans are, and manages everything that has to do with the TV World.

Yu's eyes are fixed on Justine as he says, "Nothing."

"What?" Rise asks.

"I'm sorry?" says Naoto.

"At least not until I've talked to Akira," Yu says, after a second's hesitation. Because he thinks that if this was something the Investigation Team was supposed to do something about, it would have been Margaret standing in front of that door, not Justine. There's a kind of... pattern to these things. And yea, it's a weird and mysterious pattern that no one but Igor seems to understand, and Igor has traditionally had exactly zero interest in explaining what's going on, but Yu thinks that he can see just a little bit of the pattern, now. Just enough to understand that whatever's going on here, it's not up to them to fix it.

"I'll see him in two days," he tells his friends. "And I'll let you know what happens."

-//-

_April 29_

_After School_

-//-

> **Team If You Don't Like The Name You Can Come Up With A Better One**
> 
> **Yusuke:** Futaba, I can't help noticing that you have changed the name of the group chat again
> 
> **Futaba:** Yep
> 
> **Yusuke:** I'm sensing some level of passive aggressiveness here
> 
> It's a high level
> 
> **Futaba:** Yepp
> 
> **Futaba:** Someone keeps complaining about what I call the group chat
> 
> How dare you, Yusuke
> 
> **Futaba:** TWO someones, actually, AKIRA
> 
> We really need a team name
> 
> **Yusuke:** Like the Investigation Team?
> 
> Yea, exactly
> 
> **Futaba:** We're not really investigating anything though
> 
> We'll think of something good
> 
> Something that fits us
> 
> **Yusuke:** Speaking of the Investigation Team, you're meeting with Yu today, right?
> 
> After school, yea
> 
> **Yusuke:** Are you nervous?
> 
> No
> 
> **Futaba:** He didn't eat his curry this morning
> 
> **Futaba:** Sojiro was offended
> 
> ...okay, I'm a little bit nervous
> 
> Was Sojiro really offended?
> 
> **Futaba:** I'd offer to help out at Leblanc when you get home, if I was you
> 
> **Futaba:** Toilet cleaning is the first step toward forgiveness

Akira's attention jolts back to the real world when Ann kind-of-subtly kicks behind her at the leg of his desk. He looks up, just in time to realize that Ushimaru is winding up to throw a stick of chalk in his direction. It's _not_ in time to actually duck the chalk when it comes whistling through the air to hit him smack in the middle of his forehead.

The class laughs. Ann glances over her shoulder and mouths _sorry_ at him. Akira shakes his head, and tries to rub the chalk off. He's pretty sure that he's just smearing it around, and sure enough Ann's face twitches like she's hiding a smile at his efforts.

"You okay?" she asks him later, after school has finally ended. "You seemed like you were distracted all day today."

"It's a really long story," Akira says. "Thanks for the warning about the chalk."

"Sorry it wasn't in time," Ann says.

Akira shrugs. "He's thrown chalk at me before, he'll throw chalk at me again."

"He does seem like he has it out for you," Ann admits.

"I just want to know where he's getting his chalk supply from," Akira gripes. "He must go through at least half a box a week just pelting it at me."

"It could be worse," Ann says. Again, she looks like she's trying very hard not to smile. "At least Kamoshida's gotten bored of you."

"I guess," Akira mutters. His run-in with Kamoshida, that day he and Ann and Ryuji had first started looking into the volleyball team, seems to have convinced Kamoshida that he's an easy target. Akira had kept his head down fought his instinct to snap back, because he'd been planning to cut class early and go meet Yusuke. He hadn't needed trouble that day.

Since then, Kamoshida has apparently decided that Akira's beneath his notice. There's no more rumors flying around about him--or at least, no _new_ rumors, because people still haven't gotten bored of whispering about his criminal record. Even in gym class, when Kamoshida delights in finding ways to 'accidentally' spike volleyballs at anyone he doesn't like, he doesn't even bother with Akira.

In a way, he's a little offended by that.

"Do you have any plans after school?" he asks Ann, changing the subject.

"Um," Ann says, and suddenly she's not looking at him, rummaging through her bag instead, like she just wants something to put her attention on, something other than him. Akira's not trying to peek inside her bag, really he's not, but he catches a glimpse anyway and can't help doing a double take when he sees what's inside. Over the counter medicines, bandages, and some kind of burn cream. Also, that's _definitely_ the whip he saw Ann buying when they all went to that airsoft place off Central Street. "Me and Ryuji are--I mean. We have plans, I just..."

She looks up and sees him looking. Jerks her bag closed.

Akira remembers his first impression of Ann, back at the very beginning of the school year. _Ann Takamaki_ , he'd noted to himself then. _Bad actor_. If this was any other day he'd have asked about it, but... not today. Yu's waiting for him in Mementos.

"Sorry," Akira says.

She half shrugs, and asks, "How about you?" in a very obvious attempt to move the conversation along.

"Meeting a friend," Akira says, allowing the subject change.

"Sounds fun," says Ann. There's an awkward moment or two. Ann glances at him a couple times like she's still expecting him to ask about what they both know he'd spotted in her bag, then seems to realize he's not going to push, and brightens. "Oh, so I was thinking--we were going to see a movie on Sunday, do you want to come with?"

"You and Ryuji?" Akira asks.

"And Shiho," Ann says.

Akira nods. "Sure," he says. "Sounds fun."

So they make small talk about the movie plans for the weekend, then meet up with Ryuji in front of the school entrance. No sign of Shiho, which... doesn't surprise Akira as much as he wishes it did. All three of them have been trying to talk her into quitting the volleyball team for weeks now (they might not have any real proof that Kamoshida's doing anything wrong, but those bruises _can't_ mean anything good), but so far Shiho's just insisted that her parents expect her to stay on the team.

"No stalker today?" Ryuji asks Akira, when he and Ann get close.

Akira's confused for a second, then winces when he realizes Ryuji's talking about Yu. "No," he says. "Yu's... not going to be coming here anymore. Long story."

"Good," Ryuji mutters. "That guy was bad news."

"Not really," Akira says, but feels awkward because it's definitely his fault that his friends at school had gotten the wrong idea about Yu. He looks away and says, "Listen, I should be going--"

"Us too," Ann says. "See you at the theater tomorrow!"

Akira waves and beats a hasty retreat, and just barely manages to get tot he station in time to reach the next train headed to Shibuya.

The station is crowded, but Akira has scouted Shibuya out this morning on his way to school, and found a relatively empty area to disappear from. He heads there now, opens the app, and hits start navigation. The world blurs, and in the next second, he's in a twisted, dark parody of the station he'd come in from. Akira had been expecting... he doesn't really know what he'd been expecting, but the Pyramid had been so different from Futaba's cramped bedroom that he'd assumed Mementos wouldn't look like itself either. It does, though. It looks exactly like an empty, disgusting, veiny, Shibuya.

Yusuke is either going to hate this place, or spend months painting it.

"I wondered when you would find your way here," says a voice.

"Hi, Justine," Akira says, before he even turns around to see who's there. He'd made enough trips to the Velvet Room while working through Futaba's Pyramid that he's starting to get to know the two attendants there. There's just no mistaking either of the twins for anyone else. "This place is..." He flounders for the right word, and settles on, "Gross?"

Justine looks like she's hiding a smile at his reaction. "I suppose so," she says. 

Akira looks around again. " _Ugh_ ," he says, with feeling, and this time Justine makes a noise that sounds like a stifled laugh. "Have you seen anyone else here?" he asks her.

"I have seen a few," she says. "But no one other than you so far today."

"I'm supposed to be meeting someone here," Akira says. "His name's Yu. White hair, a little bit taller than me?"

"I've met him," Justine agrees. "But he's not here now."

"Yea," Akira mutters, looking around the small area. If Yu was here, he'd have known right away. It's not exactly like there's anywhere to hide. "Guess not."

He settles in to wait.

-//-

_April 29_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Akira is already there when Yu gets to Mementos.

He's standing on the other side of the small, open space, talking to Justine next to the Velvet Room door. His back is to Yu, hands in the pockets of his coat, nodding slightly at whatever Justine's saying.

It's the first time in close to five years that Yu has seen Akira in the metaverse, and watching him, it hits Yu all of a sudden how much Akira has grown up. This isn't the same kid that had fallen into the TV World back then, stumbling accidentally into trouble (and then running face first and willing into _further_ trouble). He's a teenager, the same age now that Yu had been back then.

It's just--it's a weird feeling. Yu pushes it back, because this is not the time to deal with it.

"Hey," he calls. "Trickster."

Akira turns, and for a second his face behind the mask registers nothing but surprise.

Then he grins, and Yu feels himself smiling too. He'd been nervous that this meeting would turn into another argument, but suddenly all the tension between them has drained away into nothing at all.

"Done ignoring me?" Yu asks, as Akira walks over to talk.

"Done showing up at my school where anyone could see you trying to break my parole?" Akira shoots back. But when he gets to Yu he hugs him, and when Yu returns it, he feels the little tremor that doesn't show at all on Akira's face. Then Akira takes a deep breath and steps back, and the moment is over.

"How are you?" Yu asks. "How much trouble have you been getting into?"

"Fine," Akira says. "And..." He tilts his head slightly to one side, giving the second question some serious thought. "A moderate to high amount of trouble, I think. But I haven't been caught for any of it yet, so it could be worse."

"So I guess we're not counting the arrest," Yu says.

"Yea," Akira laughs. "No, if we're counting the arrest, then I'm in a shit-ton of trouble."

Yu tries his best not to laugh, because one of them has to be the responsible adult here, probably, and it's not going to be Akira. "So do I want to ask about this new trouble?" 

"Well," Akira says. "There's the whole metanav thing, obviously, I still don't know what I'm supposed to be doing with that, so I've just been kind of going along with it and hoping for the best. And in the real world, my temporary guardian absolutely forbid me from meeting his adopted daughter, but we made friends when she broke into the coffee shop where I'm sleeping in the middle of the night so she could plant a bug, and since then I've been meeting up with her so that we could go into the metaverse. Also Yusuke's sensei forbade _him_ from seeing _me_ so we've been pretending he's painting my friend Ann after school so he has an excuse to sneak away and meet with both of us. I mean, he _is_ also painting Ann, because he's Yusuke, but still." He considers. "I think that's pretty much everything."

There's a short pause.

"You're sleeping in a coffee shop?" Yu asks.

" _That's_ what you got out of all that?" Akira asks. A smirk plays around the edges of his expression for a second, before it settles into a more genuine smile. "Yea. It's called Leblanc, in Yongen-Jaya."

Yu makes a mental note of this. He's not sure he'll ever have a reason to go there, especially since the only place that Akira feels safe enough to meet with him is here, in a literal other dimension. But it's good to know where Akira's staying, anyway. Just in case.

"Leblanc," Yu says slowly. "That name sounds familiar."

Akira nods. "Maurice Leblanc, remember?" he asks. "The guy that--"

"That wrote the Arsene Lupin books," Yu finishes with a groan, as Akira laughs. "Of _course_. Seriously though, do I want to ask why you're sleeping in a coffee shop in the first place?"

"Because Sojiro--he's my temporary guardian, he owns Leblanc--doesn't want me at his house, so he put me up in the attic instead."

"And he doesn't want you in the house because...?"

"Because of Futaba," Akira says. "That's his daughter. She's been a shut-in since her mom died a couple of years ago, so Sojiro was trying to protect her from the _violent_ _delinquent_ he got saddled with for the year." He shrugs, like this is not a big deal. Yu would have been outraged if it had been him, but Akira is either okay with it or has had time to learn to pretend that he is. "Futaba's actually the one that's been texting you."

"Alibaba?" Yu says.

"It's the username she uses online," Akira says. "She says it's easier to talk to people that way." 

Shut-in, Yu remembers.

"But she's started using Futaba instead of Alibaba when she texts me and Yusuke," Akira says. "Which is progress, I guess? I think getting her Persona helped."

"She has a Persona too?" Yu asks. Akira has been in Tokyo for _barely one month,_ how has he had time for all this?

"Yep," Akira says. He looks--proud. A particular kind of pride that Yu realizes he recognizes. Every time he watched one of his friends awaken a Persona, every time he'd seen them step up and accept their Shadows, he'd felt that pride. "She's a navigator, like Rise."

"That's good," Yu says. "You're not going to get very far without someone like that."

"I know," Akira says. "She hasn't had much of a chance to use her Persona, because the Pyramid collapsed pretty much right after, but we have some ideas of places to go."

"So that's your team?" Yu asks. "You and Yusuke fighting, and Futaba navigating?"

Akira nods. "I know it's not a lot, but... I don't know. It's working so far. Mostly." 

It doesn't seem like enough to Yu. Two people? Sure, Akira and Yusuke have more experience than Yu had when he started, but still. There are Shadows out there that he _knows_ Akira can't handle. 

"What's that look for?" Akira asks.

"What look?"

"The one you're making at me," Akira says.

Yu hadn't realized he was making a face. "I'm just worried," he says. 

"About me?"

Yu gives him a _what do you think_ look. "Come on, Akira," he says. "Of course I'm worried about you." 

"I'm doing okay though," Akira insists. "I know it doesn't _sound_ like it, but--things are kind of working."

"Kind of," Yu repeats.

"Yea," Akira says. " _Kind of_ , which is why I wanted to talk to you in the first place." He hesitates, then says, carefully, "I wanted some... advice. Because you've done all this before." As he says _all this_ , he makes a large but vague gesture at their immediate surroundings that Yu interprets as encompassing not just Mementos, but also Shadows and the Velvet Room and everything that comes with that.

"Advice," he repeats, because there had been a particular emphasis on that word that makes him think Akira had chosen it carefully.

Akira nods. Then he sighs. "Yu," he says. "I think we both know that whatever's going to happen this year, whatever crazy Shadows or people or _whatever_ there are running around Tokyo, you could beat them all with one hand tied behind your back. But if--if you were going to do that, _you'd_ be the one dreaming about the Velvet Room, right? And I don't think you are."

"No," Yu agrees, and both of them look over at Justine, who looks back with an expression of mild interest. "I'm not even allowed in."

"So there you go," Akira says, all in a rush. "This is--it's..." 

He's obviously having a hard time finding the right words for what Yu already understands. It's the same thing he'd been thinking when he stood here with Naoto and Rise two days ago. That whatever they've stumbled into--first Yu, five years ago, and then Akira, now--it's not something that either of them will ever entirely understand. 

And it's not, right at this moment, something that Yu is supposed to step in and take over.

Carefully, Yu says, "You know that I'm always ready to help you with whatever you need to come to me for help with. If you get in over your head--" Well, that would basically be business as usual for Akira. "If you get in over your head and can't get yourself back out again," Yu amends, "You know I'm here for you. But..." He looks again at the Velvet Room door. "I'm not going to get in your way."

"You're not in the way," Akira says, looking awkward and embarrassed. 

"Those are the wrong words," Yu says. "But I think you know what I mean."

Akira takes a deep breath, and says, "We can do this."

Yu understands that _we_ means Akira and Yusuke and Futaba.

"We need to get stronger," Akira says. "And we need to figure out a lot of things, but we _can_ do it."

"I know," Yu says.

Akira hesitates, then adds, "But I might still need advice sometimes."

"Of course," Yu says."Akira, don't think..." He hesitates. "Don't think that I'm ever not going to be here for you."

And Akira relaxes. "Thanks," he says. 

Yu nods, feeling--a little bit sad, if he's being entirely honest. Everything he's just said to Akira is true, and he will take a step back and let Akira handle... _whatever_ is coming to Tokyo this year. He knows, deep down, that this is not his job to fix.

But it's still a little bit sad.

"I mean," Akira says, with a sudden, bright smile. "If you want to run around fighting Shadows after school, that seems _totally_ fair. It's not like I ever stayed out of the TV World while you guys were trying to catch Adachi and whatever."

Yu laughs, a little bit of the sense of loss draining away. "Thanks," he says. "But I came out here with Rise and Naoto earlier, and it doesn't seem like any of the Shadows down there would be worth the trouble."

"Show off," Akira scoffs. "Just because you're stronger."

Yu half smiles. He has a feeling that Akira's going to catch him up before too long. "Anyway," he says. "Your friend knows how to hack my phone now, I guess?" After Alibaba--or Futaba--was done texting him, all of Yu's messages back to her had bounced back. No valid recipient number, apparently. "If you need get in touch with me, you can. And there's Naoto too, I _know_ she's not on the list of people you aren't supposed to talk to during your probation."

"Yea," Akira admits. "I just--I don't know. When you guys kept coming to my school, I felt..."

He squirms a little. 

"We won't do that again," Yu promises. There's no point, now that Akira's willing to talk to them here. 

"I just don't want anyone to catch us," Akira says. 

"Sure," Yu says. "But if you really need someone..." He gives Akira Naoto's number, and watches to make sure Akira actually adds it to his phone contacts.

He's about ready to start saying goodbye, when Akira puts his phone away, looks back over his shoulder at Justine, and drops his voice to say, "Can I ask you something as long as we're here?"

"Sure," Yu says, dropping his voice as well. Something about Akira's tone tells him that this isn't an idle question. "What's wrong?"

"Have you seen _anyone_ from the Velvet Room recently?" Akira asks. "Other than the twins?"

Not the question Yu had expected.

"I know you said you're not allowed in right now," Akira goes on. "But Lavenza was always hanging around Inaba even when _I_ wasn't able to get into the Velvet Room, so I was kind of hoping you might have seen Margaret or... or _something_."

"No," Yu says. "But... speaking of Lavenza..."

"I don't know what happened to her," Akira says, voice somehow getting even quieter, and even more urgent. Yu has the definite impression he's trying to make sure Justine doesn't overhear. "I... had a dream, after I was arrested." Behind his mask, his eyes are suddenly shadowed and dark. "I think she's hurt. Or... I don't know. But I think she needs help. I was hoping one of the other attendants might know something."

"What about her?" Yu asks, meaning Justine.

"She and Caroline don't know anything," Akira says. "Igor just kind of smiles in this way that makes me think--" He breaks off, and then after some seconds continues in a voice that sounds slightly _wetter_ than before. "It makes me think that something bad is going on, and he just won't _tell_ me. I don't know anything about what happened to her, and I'm... scared."

"I haven't seen anyone," Yu says. "But I'll call Marie later and see if she might have any ideas." Marie isn't _technically_ a resident of the Velvet Room, but she had at least lived there for close to a year. She might have heard or picked up on something that he and Akira won't know. He's not hugely hopeful, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

"Thanks," Akira says.

"I'll let you know what I hear," Yu promises. "Okay?"

"Okay," Akira says. Then, "Yu?"

"Yea?"

"I'm... sorry for the way I acted when you came to school," Akira blurts. "I was... I don't know. Scared. Angry."

Yu shakes his head. "I'm sorry too," he says. He doesn't actually think there are people following Akira around to spy on him and see if he's living up to the terms of his probation, but... he's looking at Akira now, and listening to what he says, and he's thinking that maybe he should have tried something else. He should have been able to respect Akira's fears. "I wasn't thinking that I might just be getting you into even more trouble."

"Wow," Akira says. He manages a smile, and adds, "It must be really _nice_ not to always assume you'll be in trouble."

Yu scoffs and shakes his head. "Well maybe if you weren't always going around looking for trouble, _Trickster,_ you'd know what that was like."

"Yea," Akira says. "But where's the fun in that?"

Absolutely typical.

Some of the earlier seriousness passes, the tension lightening a little now that the conversation has moved on from Lavenza. Yu decides to risk bringing up something that he's not sure Akira's going to like hearing.

"You know I'm going to tell Dojima about this," he says, watching Akira's face carefully. "And Nanako."

Akira only hesitates for a second. Then he nods. "I miss them," he says.

"And I know they miss you," Yu says. "You should call."

"You think they'll be mad?" Akira asks. "That I waited?"

"No," Yu tells him.

Akira thinks about this for a second or two. Then he says, "I'll think about it. I'll see if I can find a way to do it safely, and... I'll think about it."

Yu takes a look at the expression on his face, and thinks that he'll give it a week, tops, before Akira caves and calls Dojima.

-//-

_April 29_

_Evening_

-//-

> **Dojima**
> 
> I can't call now because I'm on the train, but good news
> 
> I found Akira. We talked for a while, he's doing okay

> **Team**
> 
> **Futaba:** How'd it go Akira?
> 
> **Yusuke:** Is he back?
> 
> **Futaba:** Just walked into LeBlanc!
> 
> **Yusuke:** How does he look?
> 
> **Futaba:** I don't know, he's doing that thing with his face where you can't tell what he's thinking
> 
> **Yusuke:** Akira, please stop hiding behind your glasses and let us know how it went
> 
> **Futaba:** Ahhhhhhh and Sojiro just roped him into a coffee lesson
> 
> **Yusuke:**...I'll check back in half an hour
> 
> **Futaba:** Better make it an hour. Akira's been getting almost as bad about coffee as Sojiro, they can talk about it for ages

> **Dojima**
> 
> Yu, I just saw your text
> 
> Akira's definitely okay?
> 
> He's neck deep in trouble, but yea
> 
> He's making friends, and he's been spending time with Yusuke
> 
> What kind of trouble?
> 
> It's a long story, but do you remember the fog from the year I lived in Inaba?
> 
> Shit
> 
> Something like that
> 
> **Team**
> 
> Three things
> 
> One, the talk with Yu went really well
> 
> Two, I LIKE Sojiro's coffee lessons
> 
> Three, why are we just 'Team' now?
> 
> I'm glad it went well!
> 
> I let Yusuke choose the name
> 
> And I couldn't think of anything
> 
> We really, really need a team name
> 
> Never mind that! What happened with your friend?
> 
> We talked. He's going to stop stalking me at school, and I think we'll be meeting up there again
> 
> And you're okay?
> 
> Yea. I'm definitely good :)

-//-

_April 30_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Ann and Ryuji have taken two tentative trips back through the Metanav to the Shadow filled castle. Both times they've been as quiet and careful as possible, keeping an eye out for the terrifying Black Mask that had almost killed Ryuji. Staying quiet is hard though, even with Ryuji actually doing his best to keep from crashing his way through the castle at every opportunity. There are Shadows everywhere, and too many times they've gone around a corner and been surprised, or been caught out in a long empty stretch of hall with no time to run or hide.

"You just need to _think_ about it differently," Morgana says today, when Ann and Ryuji have made their way back down to his prison cell. Technically there's no reason they need to come down to the dungeons every single time they're in the castle--it's pretty obvious by this point that the key to Morgana's cell isn't going to just magically appear here--but it just doesn't feel right not to stop by and talk for a while. Since they've _completely and utterly failed_ at getting Morgana out, keeping him company for a while is literally the least they can do.

"What do you mean, think about it differently?" Ryuji asks. He's sitting on the ground, legs sprawled out in front of them as he wraps the last of their bandages around a burn on his arm. They've made their visit to Morgana their last stop of the day today, and both of them are already pretty beat up. "We're thinking about it _fine_."

"Obviously not," Ann says. "Or we wouldn't be limping out of the castle every time we come here." Unlike Ryuji, who doesn't seem to care that everything in this dungeon is gross and chilly and damp, Ann prefers not to sit when they're down here. She stands instead, occasionally shifting her weight nervously from one foot to the other. "What do you mean, Morgana?"

"You have to be..." Morgana's wide eyes look suddenly bright and excited. " _Sneakier_."

"We've been trying--" Ryuji starts, annoyed, but Morgana interrupts him.

"No!" he says. "But think of it like... like you're a couple of cool Phantom Thieves infiltrating the castle, right?" He's been sitting too, on his side of the bars, but he jumps up now, waving one arm as if flourishing a rapier. "You can't just go charging in! You need some _style_!"

"You think?" Ryuji asks.

"Yea!" Morgana says. "Trust me, I definitely know what I'm talking about."

Ryuji says, in a tone that still sounds reluctant, even though Ann can see the growing excitement on his face behind his mask, "That sounds kinda cool, right Ann?"

"Sure," says Ann, who is willing to try anything to help them get through this place. "I mean, why not? We already have the outfits." She gestures to all three of them, Morgana included. 

(And, honestly, it does sound... it sounds cool. Ann thinks about the shows she used to watch as a kid, about the characters she'd idolized back then, and thinks--this could be her chance to be like them)

"It's absolutely cool!" Morgana says, and he sounds _so_ excited--something that is getting rarer and rarer, the longer he's stuck in that cell--that Ann doesn't have the heart to be any less than excited too. "A team of Phantom Thieves, sneaking through Palaces, stealing Treasures--"

"Wait a second," Ryuji interrupts, abandoning all attempts to sound uninterested. "Treasure?"

"Haven't I mentioned the Treasure?" Morgana asks, pausing in the middle of a particularly dramatic flourish.

"No," Ann and Ryuji say in almost perfect unison.

"Treasures," Morgana says, voice dropping slightly into lecture mode. "Are the whole _point_ of Palaces like this. They're the center of the distortion that causes them in the first place." He shrugs, like this is obvious. "You steal a Treasure, and you change their heart."

"Wait a second," Ann says. "So Kamoshida has a Treasure hidden somewhere here?"

Morgana nods.

"And if we steal it...?"

"It would take away the distortion," Morgana says. "All the stuff here about how he thinks he's a King, and how he looks down on everyone, and hurts them. In the real world, he'd see the things he's doing, and realize how bad they actually are."

Ann's mind races as she thinks through what that would mean. They haven't been able to do anything in the real world to help the volleyball team, but maybe, from in here, they _could_ do some actual good. If they can't get anyone on the team to talk about what Kamoshida's doing to them, maybe they can get Kamoshida to give up his distortion all on his own.

It's _perfect._

"So, Phantom Thieves," she says brightly, feeling herself smile against the hard edges of her mask. "Sounds like a great idea."

"We should have code names," Ryuji says, standing up and bouncing a little on his feet. 

"That's probably smart," Ann admits. She looks back at Morgana, trying to remember all the bits and pieces of information they've learned from him over the past few weeks. "If we're inside Kamoshia's... heart, right?"

Morgana nods.

"If we're inside his heart," Ann continues, more confidently, "Then who _knows_ how safe it is to just be using our real names in here," Ann says. At this point, after this much time in the castle, it probably doesn't make much difference. But the other two are so excited about the idea, and--

Well, part of her is too. Part of her thinks that if they're going to do this (not just sneaking around, not just looking for the key to help Morgana out, but actually _taking Kamoshida down_ ), then they have to do it right.

And that's how, after a little bit more arguing back and forth over which names are cool and which are actually lame (Ann has to shoot down _Catgirl_ three separate times), Panther, Skull, and Mona officially become the Phantom Thieves. 

_Phantom Thieves_ , Ann thinks as she and Ryuji-- _Skull,_ now--say goodbye to Morgana, and head out of the castle. Ann turns the words over and over in her head as she and Ryuji get back to the real world and split up to go their separate ways.

She decides, to her own surprise, that she likes the sound of it. 

The Phantom Thieves don't sound like the kind of people that give up on helping a friend, even if that friend _is_ a monster cat-thing that insists he's actually an amnesiac human. The Phantom Thieves sound like they could really steal a Treasure, change a heart, and help the entire volleyball team. The Phantom Thieves sound like they could make the world, or at least the part of it that revolves around Shujin, a better place.

> **Ryuji**
> 
> We should go back tomorrow
> 
> Can't. We have plans with Shiho and Akira, remember? The movie
> 
> Can we just ditch?
> 
> Ryuji!
> 
> Fiiiiiine. Then can we go back after?
> 
> After the movie should work, yes

Ann barely thinks about anything else that entire evening, and when she goes to sleep, the same thought is still swirling around in her mind.

_The Phantom Thieves._

She already knows she's not going to be able to focus on the movie at all tomorrow.

-//-

_May 1_

_Afternoon_

-//-

The movie on Sunday does not go at all the way Akira expects.

To start with, it's just Akira, Ann, and Ryuji there. Shiho, who had been planning to come, had gotten last minute notice of Sunday volleyball practice and called Ann with her apologies a few minutes after the other three had met up.

(" _You're_ not the one that should be apologizing," Ann had said, in a tone that made Akira think Kamoshida should have been very grateful to be far away from her in that moment)

So it's just the three of them, but from the very beginning Akira is aware that the other two have something going on that they're not willing to tell him about. They're excited and distracted, and it seems like every chance they get to talk without him overhearing, the two of them have their heads together, whispering with an actually kind of amazing intensity. 

When he asks if something's going on, Ryuji says _no_ so quickly that Akira is immediately convinced the answer is _yes_.

At first, Akira isn't even trying to eavesdrop. He really isn't. It's just that when he meets them in front of the movie theater he hears Ryuji say _"--should probably try to go back again today, Morgana's been locked in that cell for weeks--_ " and of course that gets his attention. 

And then he gets sent to buy popcorn for the group before the movie, and when he comes back, Ann is whispering to Ryuji _"...doesn't_ matter _if Morgana's a cat, we need all the help we can get,"_ which is also a weird thing to overhear, and after that honestly the eavesdropping is significantly more intentional.

And interesting.

Because Akira is very good at picking up on information that people are trying to keep secret. It's a skill he'd honed years ago, back in Inaba, when he used to hang around Yu and the rest of the Investigation Team to learn what they were doing in the TV World. Compared to that, this is easy. Ann and Ryuji are so absorbed in and _excited_ about whatever they're talking about that they barely seem aware that Akira might be listening.

He hears something about a castle, and a treasure, and (excitedly) _Phantom Thieves_ , and then more than once, the word _Shadows_. And there's just... there's something about the way that they say it, something a little bit wary and a little bit excited and maybe a little bit afraid, too. 

It's a long shot. It's not even possible, really.

...but when Akira was twelve, he'd ignored all the clues telling him that Yu knew about the TV World. He'd ignored them for _months_ , and had felt absolutely stupid when he finally figured it out. So now, when he hears his friends whispering about Shadows, he has to at least check.

He'll feel stupid if he's reading too much into it, but he'll feel even stupider if he ignores all this and misses something.

"Hey Ryuji," he says, as they're heading out of the theater. He looks at his phone and makes a noise of frustration. "I can't get online with my phone for some reason. Can I borrow yours for a second?" He offers up a smile that's just the right amount of embarrassed. "I need to check the train times."

"Huh?" Ryuji says. "Oh, right. Sure."

He unlocks his phone and passes it over to Akira, who swipes through Ryuji's apps until he finds the icon with the bright red eye, staring up at him from the screen. Akira stares back.

His friends have been to the metaverse.

...and they've found some kind of cat they're trying to break out of prison, it sounds like?

"Still not used to the subways?" Ann asks sympathetically.

"I'm... getting used to it," Akira says. He taps through the app as quickly as he can, finding only a single known location. _Kamoshida, castle, king, Shujin_. Kamoshida's distorted heart sees himself as king of Shujin Academy.

"You'll get the hang of it," Ann says reassuringly.

Looking back on it, that probably explains why Ann and Ryuji have spent so much energy investigating Kamoshida at school. And there had been the trip to the airsoft store too. For equipment? It makes a lot more sense than any other reason they might have been buying weapons. Akira had bought daggers himself, on that same exact trip. 

It would explain the bag full of supplies he'd seen in Ann's bag the other day, too. Weapons for fighting Shadows in the metaverse, and healing supplies for when the fights go wrong.

"Thanks," Akira says, closing the app and handing the phone back over to Ryuji.

Do they have Persona? From the snatches he's heard today, the two of them don't seem to know very much about fighting Shadows. Akira's not sure if that means they don't have Persona at all, or if it means they're just inexperienced, but either way he's worried. The Shadows he's seen so far in Tokyo are _tough_ \--he wouldn't have wanted to go through Futaba's Palace back when he was just starting out.

"No problem," Ryuji says.

How long have they known about this? They've definitely been heading off together a lot after school. And thinking back on it, hadn't the very first conversation Akira had with Shiho been about how Ann kept going somewhere that didn't have any signal? Where in Tokyo could she have been going that doesn't have cell phone service.

"I guess I'll see you at school tomorrow," Akira says.

How did they even get the app? Akira's kind of been assuming that the app is somehow from Igor, but would Igor have given it to Ann and Ryuji too?

"We should probably get going now anyway," Ann agrees, grabbing Ryuji by the elbow and tugging. "We have some stuff to do, Akira, sorry."

They're going back into Kamoshida's castle, aren't they? To rescue their cat?

"No problem," Akira says. "I have some homework I should be working on." Which is true, but he's not going to get any of it done today because he's going to follow them in. It's not just that he needs to see for himself that his friends have been going into the metaverse, although curiosity definitely plays a part. But now he's worried, too, that they might not be ready for whatever Shadows they're going to face.

"Cool," Ryuji says. "See you tomorrow."

"Bye," says Akira, and waits until they're out of sight before grabbing for his phone and firing off a series of texts to Yusuke and Futaba.

> **Team Leblanc**
> 
> So is there any chance either of you can get down to Shujin this afternoon?
> 
> Only I'm pretty sure there's a distortion tied to Shujin, and Ann and Ryuji have been investigating it
> 
> **Futaba:** I would really like to know how this came up in casual conversation while you guys were at the movies
> 
> **Futaba:** That sounds like a story
> 
> They were talking about it, I was eavesdropping, and then I made up an excuse to borrower Ryuji's phone and check for the metanav
> 
> Which he has. Keywords are kamoshida, castle, king, and shujin
> 
> **Yusuke:** Are you going in?
> 
> Yea. I think they're heading there now,
> 
> Honestly I'm not sure they're prepared. I mean, we had trouble in the Pyramid, and that's with decent supplies and five years of experience
> 
> So, do either of you think you can get there? I know it's last minute
> 
> **Yusuke:** I... think I should be able to get away. Sensei might think it's strange if I tell him I'm going to meet Ann for a painting session on a Sunday, but I'll try

Akira waits, not really sure if he can press Futaba for an answer on this. She's been doing better since the Pyramid's collapse, she really _has_. But that doesn't change the fact that in the entire time Akira's known her, the only time she's ever left her bedroom was the night she snuck out to Leblanc at midnight. There's a basically zero chance that she's going to agree to come all the way out to Shujin.

> **Team Leblanc**
> 
> **Futaba:** I'll go if one of you can come and get me
> 
> **Futaba:** I don't want to go alone

But she _is_ willing to go, and that's something. 

Akira lets out a long breath and sits down at a bench, looking up at the clouds over the harsh Tokyo skyline. Okay. So... _okay_. His friends have a way into the metaverse.

This is going to be interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have been intending to post something in this series covering the events of Persona 4: Arena and Persona 4: Arena Ultimax for a while (and procrastinating because I am very nervous about trying to write Persona 3 characters). I have finally sat down and planned out what would happen if I did write out Arena/Ultimax, and also written the first chapter. I'm wondering if anyone would be interested in reading it, at this point? It feels slightly like cheating to go back now and post that, since it takes place right after Forearmed, so about four years before this fic.
> 
> Anyway, I figured I'd leave a note here asking if anyone would want to read that, and maybe post chapter one if there's an interest.
> 
> EDIT: This is up now, at https://archiveofourown.org/works/26553433/chapters/64729921


	9. May 1

_May 1_

_Afteroon_

-//-

In the end, they decide that since Akira is the only one ready to drop everything and go straight to Shujin, that he should do that immediately. They don't know how much help Ann and Ryuji might need, or how soon, so someone needs to get there as soon as possible. Meanwhile, _if_ Yusuke can get away from his sensei, he'll go by Yongen-Jaya, meet up with Futaba, and bring her along.

It's not the best plan, Akira thinks as he pockets his phone and heads for the station, but it's something. The problem is really that there's just so... _much_ of Tokyo. If this was Inaba, where you could get anywhere without ever even thinking about a train, and a bike would take you from one side of the town to the other in half an hour, it would be so much easier to coordinate them all getting there.

Of course, if this was Inaba, Futaba wouldn't have been there and neither would Yusuke. If Akira had access to the metaverse at all, it wouldn't have been alone, or with whichever members of the Investigation Team had time after college or travel or work.

He shakes the thoughts away and refocuses on the problem in front of him. He's gone back to his old habits of carrying metaverse equipment with him everywhere he goes, so he has weapons and armor in his bag, along with some of the experimental medicines from Dr. Takemi (the... _strange_ doctor with the clinic down the street from Leblanc) that he's been wanting to try out. Considering that he hadn't been planning on going anywhere near the metaverse this morning, he's actually in pretty good shape.

When he gets to the street outside Shujin, Akira hesitates for a second, looking at the unnaturally empty streets. He's not used to being here when it's not a school day. There's almost no one around, and no sign of Ann or Ryuji either. It's disappointing--it would have been easier to catch them before they went into the metaverse--but not completely surprising. Akira had lingered for a while outside the theater while he caught Yusuke and Futaba up on what had happened, long enough for the other two to get a head start and enter the metaverse before him. Akira leans against the wall of a building across the street from the school, and pulls up the metanav.

Kamoshida. Castle. Shujin.

Begin navigation.

The world blurs and shifts around him, and Akira blinks away a moment or two of disorientation. He's getting more used to the way the app feels, but it still takes him a few seconds to adjust. The air here is... heavy, and depressing. Very different from the Pyramid, Akira thinks as he wanders forward and looks up at the castle looming up in front of him where the school is in reality.

After some consideration, he pulls his gaze away from the castle and takes in the other details. His clothes haven't changed yet, which doesn't surprise him all that much. He knows by now that if he's not seen as a threat in the metaverse, he keeps his street clothes unless and until that changes. And with the way Kamoshida seems to have completely lost interest in him in the real world--he's not even spreading _rumors_ about him anymore--it makes a kind of sense that he's not seen as a threat here.

Justine is standing in front of a door to the Velvet Room, and nods at him when she sees him looking in her direction.

"Were you waiting for me?" Akira calls out to her.

"Possibly," Justine says. As usual, neither her expression nor her tone give away anything at all. "Did you come chasing the others?"

"So they _are_ here?" Akira asks.

"They have been here several times," Justine tells him. "And yes, they are here now."

"Are they doing okay?" Akira asks.

Justine considers this question. "They are moving slowly," she says. "And they are often injured when they leave, but never very badly."

"Thanks," Akira says. "I'm going to go catch up with them." But he only manages a few steps before Justine calls him back.

"Inmate," she says, quietly.

"Yea?"

"There is a third person that has been here," she says. "Only once. The others call him Black Mask, and they are afraid of him."

"A third person?" Akira echoes. Someone with a Persona, he assumes, or why would they just be wandering around here with a mask? "Have you seen him?"

Justine nods.

"Do you know who he is?"

This time, she shakes her head. "But be careful how you approach them," she says. "They have been given reason to be wary of other people in this place."

Maybe it's a good thing, Akira thinks, that he'd shown up in his normal clothes. He doesn't want to be mistaken for this Black Mask, whoever he is.

Akira walks into the castle, sticking to the shadows and moving carefully. There are Shadows here, but Akira doesn't have much trouble staying away from them, and he's more interested in finding his friends than he is in getting into a fight right at this second. He doesn't have Futaba's navigational abilities, which might have helped him find Ann and Ryuji, but he remembers that they'd been worried about a cat in the dungeons, and he heads in a general downward direction until the smooth stone walls turn rough, and the air fills with the scent of damp and decay.

He sees the torture rooms where people that look _very_ much like the members of the volleyball team are endlessly abused. That throws him at first, but he stands there watching for a few minutes, taking in the way nobody ever fights back, the way they don't seem to even be _upset_ , and decides eventually that they can't possibly be real people. Even the volleyball team--the _real_ team, he reminds himself firmly--don't look this beaten down. They're not Shadows, he doesn't think, but that doesn't mean they have to be human. The Sphinx in Futaba's Pyramid, the one that she'd told them later was called a cognition, that hadn't been exactly a Shadow either. 

This is the same thing, Akira insists to himself, and believes it about 95%.

He moves carefully through the dungeon cells, avoiding Shadows and keeping an eye open for the cat he'd heard Ann and Ryuji whispering about. Progress is not as quick as he'd have liked, because he's also trying to avoid looking too closely at any of the volleyball prisoners. The... cognitions, if that's really what they are, don't seem to mind what's happening to them, but it's getting under Akira's skin more than he would have liked.

Honestly, it's almost enough to make him grateful for the relative safety of his Velvet Room prison cell. At least the twins aren't cannoning volleyballs into his face.

When he does eventually find the cat, it takes him a solid thirty seconds of staring to convince himself that yes this is probably what Ann and Ryuji had been talking about. It's not--well, it's not a _normal_ cat, to put it as politely as possible. It's sitting in the middle of its cell when Akira first sees it, looking sad and tired with its head in its hands.

Akira peels himself away from the shadows, and approaches the cell. He's not trying to be quiet, instead keeping his posture open and giving the cat a chance to notice him, and sure enough he's only gotten about halfway there when the cat's head jerks up.

"Hey--"

"It's okay," Akira says quickly, as the cat starts to shout. "I came to help."

"Who _are_ you?" the cat asks.

"My name's Akira," Akira tells him. He stops in front of the cell door, and the two of them size each other up. Akira's having a really hard time figuring out what exactly this thing is. _Not_ a cat, even though that's probably what he resembles most. And he doesn't seem like the empty shells of the fake volleyball players. So what does that leave? Akira's reminded a little bit of Teddie, if anything, but even that's not a perfect comparison.

Maybe it's just better not to think too hard about it.

"You're not the Black Mask?" the cat asks. "Are you?"

"Nope," Akira says.

"Guess you'd have to actually be wearing a mask to be the Black Mask," the cat says, relaxing a little. Akira does not explain that if Kamoshida hadn't apparently decided that Akira isn't worth his time anymore, he _would_ be wearing a mask. He can feel it, _almost_ real, because after all this is the metaverse, but for now he pushes it back and away. One thing at a time, and he doesn't want to spook either the cat or his friends.

"Guess so," he says instead.

"Good," says the cat. Then he jumps abruptly to his feet, eyes widening as if in realization. "Hey!" he says.

" _Shh_ ," Akira hisses, but luckily for both of them, the sound doesn't seem to have attracted any Shadows.

"Hey," the cat says again, more quietly. "You _really_ shouldn't be here! There's all kinds of dangerous things, like Shadows, and even if _you're_ not the Black Mask, he might still be hanging around somewhere! You should get out of here!"

"I think I'll be okay," Akira assures him, even though honestly he has no idea how strong the Shadows are here, or who this Black Mask is. The truth is that he's alone in an unfamiliar part of the Metaverse, except for a cat locked in a prison cell while cognitions of his classmates scream from down the hall. He'd have to be inhuman to not be at least a little worried.

"You don't know what you're getting into," the cat says. "Trust me, okay? Someone like you couldn't even fight back against the stuff in here."

He actually seems concerned, Akira thinks as he looks into the cat's unnaturally large eyes. It's a misplaced concern, since Akira actually does have a Persona and is perfectly capable of fighting Shadows, but it's decent of him to be worried, all the same. "Well then," Akira says. "I guess we'll just have to get out of here fast."

"We?" the cat echoes. "You're not listening, Frizzy Hair!"

"Frizzy...?"

"You need to get out of here before something finds you, okay?"

"Or," Akira says. "I can break you out of this cell, and then we'll go meet up with Ann and Ryuji, and then we'll _all_ get out of here."

The cat pauses for a second with his mouth half open. Then he asks, "How do you know about them?" 

"We all go to the same school," Akira says. "We were hanging out today, actually, and that's how I found out about this place. I overheard them talking about it, and I followed them in."

"You're all friends, then?"

Akira nods.

The cat studies him as if searching for a lie, and Akira does his absolute best to look innocent. It's not an expression that usually sits comfortably on his face, but amazingly enough it seems to work. The suspicion seems to slide off the cat's face, and he says, "Well since you're their friend, you might as well know that we use codenames while we're in here," he says. "Ann is Panther, and Ryuji is Skull."

"Why?" Akira asks.

"Because this Palace is the distortion of someone's heart," the cat tells him. "And we don't want to just be running around using real names, do we? Their distortions affect this place, so what happens here could affect them too. And it might be _bad_ if they knew who was running around in here."

It makes a kind of sense, and Akira tucks this suggestion away for when he and Yusuke and Futaba go to check out Madarame's distortion. There hadn't been much point in keeping secrets in the Pyramid, since Futaba knew all about it anyway, but they should be more careful from now on. Out loud, he says, "I actually meant why those code names specifically?"

The cat smiles. "You'll get it when you see them," he says, with just a hint of smugness, a kind of _I know something you don't know_.

Akira decides to accept this for now. "And do you have a codename?" he asks. "Or a real name, even?"

"You can call me Mona while we're in here," the cat says.

"Okay," Akira says, and he sits down on the floor, pulling his bag toward him to search through it. "Well then Mona, time to get you out."

"Just like that?" Mona asks.

"Yep," Akira says, still digging through his bag.

"How?" Mona asks. "The key's gone, Panther and Skull have been looking for it for _weeks_."

"I," Akira says. "Am going to pick the lock." He finally finds what he's looking for, and pulls out the little plastic baggy. " _There_ we go," he says.

"Grass?" Mona asks, looking skeptical.

"Wheat," Akira corrects, shifting into a position kneeling in front of the door so he's at eye level with the lock.

"Wheat," Mona says, in a voice that sounds so flat and disappointed that Akira winces. Okay, fair enough, that probably needed more of an explanation than he'd bothered with. From Mona's point of view, it probably seems like Akira's either crazy or just messing with him, and for someone that's been locked up for who knows how long, that's just cruel.

"I had a garden when I was a kid," he says, as he keeps working. "My--well, let's just say sister, to keep it simple--talked me into it when I was in grade school." He wonders if Nanako's keeping up with the garden alone now, and feels a second's pang of homesickness before he pushes it forcefully down. Right now is _not_ the time to be thinking about that. "We started growing vegetables and things," he says. "And a lot of what we grew just did normal things when I took them into the metaverse--" He hides a smile as he goes on in an absolutely normal tone. "You know, restoring health or energy, or blocking certain types of attacks."

"Wha--"

"And being able to grow replacements for Goho-Ms was great, of course, because I _never_ remembered to stock up on those."

" _What do you mean you were growing Goho-M--"_

"But certain types of _wheat_ ," Akira says, completely unable to hide his grin now. "Worked pretty well for unlocking treasure chests, and I was hoping it'd work on a door lock." There's a click from the lock, and the door swings open. Akira stands up. "There's some old garden plots no one's been taking care of up on the school roof. I've been, uh... _borrowing_ anything that looks useful." And he really needs to find some time to actually get back into gardening himself, one of these days.

"But," Mona says. "You-- _how_?"

Akira has never seen anyone look actually gobsmacked in real life, but there's really no other word for the expression on Mona's face now.

"You've _been_ to the Metaverse already," Mona says at last, accusingly.

"I fell in when I was eleven," Akira says with a shrug. "It looked a little different then, but..." It's getting harder to fight down a smile at Mona's expression. "The metaverse is still the metaverse."

"Do you have a Persona?" Mona asks.

"I have a few," Akira says casually.

"A _few_?"

"At the moment."

"You--" Mona points an accusatory paw in Akira's direction. "I thought you said you just came here because of Panther and Skull!"

"I did," Akira says. "We were hanging out today, I heard them talking about this place, and I finally put the pieces together and realizes they had access to the Metaverse too." And if it had taken him more than a month to realize this, at least it's still less time than it had taken him to figure out that Yu had a Persona, back when they shared a _bedroom_. "And..." His smile fades a little. "Well, they seemed like they were pretty new to this. So I came to see if I could help."

Mona seems to come back down to earth a little, ears drooping. "Yea," he admits. "They _are_ pretty new. I would have helped, but..."

But, he's been locked up the whole time, it sounds like. Akira wonders if Mona has a Persona too. "Well, now we both can," he says. "Come on. Do you know where they might be?"

"No," Mona says. "I've been locked up here this whole time they've been exploring."

Akira is definitely starting to feel bad for this cat. "We'll find them," he says, picking a random direction. "Come on, we'll check down here. We might as well start somewhere."

-//-

_May 1_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Ryuji and Ann are in the middle of a fight with a trio of Shadows that look like some kind of tiny demon things and _are strong against lightning_ , when Ryuji first notices, out of the corner of his eye, that someone is coming up the hall toward them.

Two someones, he realizes, after an especially shitty life drain attack. And one of them looks like Morgana, which can't be right because Morgana is still locked up in the dungeons, and the other one--

There's a flare of heat is Ann and Carmen take out all three tiny demons with a lucky fire attack, and then Ann says, "Akira?"

"Hi," Akira says.

Shit. Ryuji puts a hand against the wall to steady himself as he takes this in. Akira looks--well, he looks exactly the same as he ever does, which is in Ryuji's opinion _way_ too casual for a place like this. He might as well have been standing in the hall at school, or waiting for a train, for how upset he looks over having wandered into an alternate dimension full of terrifying Shadows.

"You can't be here," Ryuji says.

"Why not?" Akira asks.

"It's _dangerous!_ " Ryuji says, waving a hand at where the Shadows had been a few seconds before. "You can't just come wandering in here!"

"How _did_ you get in here?" Ann asks, which is a question Ryuji hadn't even thought to ask, but also a really good one.

"About that," Akira says, wincing a little as he rubs at the back of his neck. "Remember when I borrowed your phone to check the train times after the movie?"

"Yea," Ryuji says, not getting it.

"I didn't need to check the trains," Akira says. "I wanted to see if you had the metanav."

"You _what_ \--"

"How did you know about it?" Ann asks. Her voice is quiet, and... it actually sounds a little suspicious. That throws Ryuji (who has not actually thought of being suspicious of Akira until right this second), but--actually, yea. Actually, it _is_ a little weird that he'd just happen to know about all this, isn't it?

Akira pulls out his own phone and holds it out so that Ryuji and Ann can both see the screen. There's Kamoshida's castle listed on the top, and below it another location that reads _Ichiryusai Madarame, Atelier, Museum,_ and then below that a third entry that just says _Mementos_.

"You've been in the metaverse before," Ryuji says, hearing a little bit of accusation in his own tone as Akira puts his phone away.

"Yea," Akira says. "And so have you guys. I just didn't put the pieces together until today when you guys were, uh--not being very careful about what you said in front of me."

"Well we didn't know that you knew about any of it!" Ryuji says. Yea, okay, so they'd been excited today, but why shouldn't they have been? They've been wandering through the Palace for weeks, but yesterday had been the first time they felt like they might just have a chance at getting their shit together and being able to do something. It's pretty hard to focus on movies and just... hanging out, when there's _Phantom Thief_ business they could be thinking about instead.

"Anyway," Akira says quietly. "I'm sorry about not being... _completely_ upfront, but I didn't want to keep lying. That, uh, hasn't worked out so well for me in the past."

How has something like this _ever_ come up in the past, Ryuji wonders.

(A nd who was he lying to? And what does Akira mean when he said it hadn't worked out well? Hadn't worked out well for _who_?)

"I thought you guys might need help," Akira says.

"He did get me out," Morgana offers.

Ryuji had almost forgotten that Morgana's here, too. "How?" he asks.

"I picked the lock," Akira says with a shrug. 

"With a _vegetable,_ " Morgana says.

"A grain, technically," Akira says, as if this helps clear up anything at all.

"You know," Morgana says, giving an excited little hop. "I can teach you how to make _real_ lockpicks, when we're out of here."

Ryuji's mouth is already open to say something else, but he stops when he hears Morgana's comment. All three of them turn to stare down at Morgana.

"You... know how to make lockpicks," Ann says slowly. "And you've been in that cell up for weeks?"

"Well I couldn't exactly make them from in there," Morgana says defensively. "You need supplies, and tools."

"Or wheat," Akira offers.

Morgana grumbles something that might have been _"You're not helping_ _."_

"Listen," Ann says. "We should probably have the rest of this conversation outside. In case any other Shadows show up?"

They _have_ been getting kind of loud, Ryuji realizes. "Okay," he mutters. "Yea, right. We should head out."

They make sure to stay away from Shadows on their way out of the Palace. Whateveris going on with Akira, he's standing there with no mask, and so as far as Ryuji is concerned, that means he's going to be basically useless in a fight. He remembers what it had been like, back when Ann had Carmen but he didn't have Captain Kidd. The Shadows had never seemed all that interested in attacking him, deciding to go after her every single time, but that hadn't helped Ryuji feel any less useless, or (sometimes) any less afraid.

He doesn't say any of this out loud of course, but it looks like Ann's thinking pretty much the same thing. By silent agreement, they stick to the paths they've already cleared of Shadows, and hide the one time they spot one coming toward them around a corner. And it's going pretty well, until they get to the actual entrance and the fake Kamoshida is standing there.

Akira's the first one to see him, when the group is still a decent distance away, and when he does he stops dead in his tracks and says, " _What."_

Ryuji almost walks into him because of how suddenly he'd stopped, and looks past him to see the (depressingly familiar) sight of a mostly naked Kamoshida in front of them. Apparently Akira had been lucky enough to not run into him on his way in.

"It's his Shadow," Morgana says. "Haven't you seen one before?"

"Sure," Akira says, as if this is the kind of thing that happens to him regularly. He keeps his eyes turned up toward the ceiling as he says it, as if he's trying hard to not look at Kamoshida's Shadow even accidentally. Not that Ryuji can exactly blame him. There is way too much of Kamoshida to be seen, the way the Shadow dresses. "But I mean... I've never seen one that looks like _that_ before. They're less, uh--naked. Usually, anyway."

"I dunno about any other Shadows," Ryuji says. "But this one always looks like this."

Akira (still looking anywhere but at the Shadow), says, "So if the Shadow is here, does that mean Kamoshida's been here?" Akira asks.

"I hope not," Ann says with a shudder. 

"This whole place is a manifestation of Kamoshida's distortion," Morgana explains. "His Shadow is the way he sees himself within the distortion--it has nothing to do with whether he's physically been here or not."

"Weird," Akira says, and Ryuji's just opening his mouth to ask any of the thousand questions that he suddenly wants to ask, when Kamoshida finally sees them. 

"You again!" he sneers, face distorting into an expression of outrage. "I thought you _delinquents_ had decided to leave for good!"

There's something in his tone that never fails to piss Ryuji off, and today is no exception. "No way!" Ryuji shouts back at the Shadow. "We're still here, and we're not going away anytime soon!"

"Ryuji!" Ann hisses. "Maybe stop provoking him?"

"Nah," Ryuji says, anger still running through him like electricity. "It's too late for that anyway, isn't it?" His heart is pounding, and he's amazed that he can make his voice sound like anything close to normal. "He's pissed at us already, why bother pretending to be polite?"

"You've caused enough trouble for me," Kamoshida says. "Guards!"

A pair of guards in knight's armor come running out at the shout, and then turn into _four_ Shadows, which would have been way too many for Ryuji and Ann to take on by themselves, even if they hadn't had someone else to worry about keeping safe.

"Mona," Ann says, as the Shadows press in around the little group. "You can fight now that you're out of that cell, right?"

"Yes," Morgana says. "But also--"

"Oh yea!" Ryuji says, brightening. "Forgot you had a Persona!" Maybe there's a chance they _will_ be able to get out of this. Three against four is definitely better odds than two against four, right? As long as these Shadows aren't too much more powerful than they are...

"You guys," Morgana says. "I'm trying to tell you--"

He's interrupted by one of the Shadows taking a swipe at him, and has to jump out of the way with a catlike screech. Ryuji grits his teeth and reaches for his mask, trying to think whether Captain Kidd can do anything that's going to really hurt this Shadow. Have they fought this kind before? Do they know what attacks are more effective? He can't remember, he's _crap_ at remembering which Shadows do what--

" _Arsene!_ "

Ryuji jerks and looks around at the sound of Akira's sudden shout, just in time to give himself a minor heart attack when Akira's clothes change to something _long_ , and _dark._

They've seen someone dressed in those colors here before.

"Skull," Ann says quietly, as around them all four Shadows go up in smoke. If it had just been the two of them here, they would have had to run, and they would have been lucky to get away with only minor injuries. But Akira, _apparently,_ can just call up a Persona and blast them apart like... like...

"Black Mask," Ryuji says, because how many powerful Persona users can there possibly be running around Kamoshida's Palace, dressed all in black and tearing through Shadows like there's no tomorrow? 

He's been on the wrong side of Black Mask once already, and that's more than enough to know that he never wants to go through that again. And he's scared, and he's _angry_ that he's scared, but he's not so angry or so scared that he can't think straight enough to know that they need to run. Kamoshida's Shadow is gone--probably that attack had scared him off the same way it's scared Ryuji, so that's something at least. They have a straight shot from here to the exit, and Ryuji fully intends to go for it.

Ryuji grabs for Ann's hand, pulling her after him as he starts to run. " _Mona!"_ he shouts over his shoulder, and is relieved to see him book it after them, yelling the whole time for them to wait. Akira's caught flat footed for a second, maybe surprised by the sudden movement, but then he's chasing after them, too.

If this is going to be a fight, Ryuji does _not_ want to have it in the castle. He's pretty sure he can kick Akira's ass (shit, shit, _shit_ , how did this happen, they're supposed to be _friends_ ) in the real world, if it comes to it, but here? No way.

"Skull!" Morgana shouts. "Stop _running_!"

But they'd been practically on the castle doorstep already, and now they're actually standing outside. Ryuji grabs his phone and frantically scrolls through until, finally, he finds the right screen. The world dissolves, and it's just him and Ann on the street outside Shujin. 

"That was-- _Akira_ was the Black Mask?" Ann demands.

"Had to be," Ryuji says, tense and ready because Akira hadn't been that far behind them, he'll be coming out any second now. "You saw the costume, right?"

Ann shudders. "I didn't see his actual mask," she admits. "But he did look.... he looked a _lot_ like Black Mask, didn't he?"

And then Akira's standing in front of them, looking so normal that it's almost unfair. His words come tumbling out of his mouth before he's even fully, solidly there, running together as he says, "I know what you're thinking but I'm _not_ the Black Mask, I swear. I'm not going to hurt either of you. I'm not going to hurt anyone."

"How did you even know about him, then?" Ryuji demands.

"That's..." He hesitates. "I mean, it's actually kind of hard to expl--"

"How did you know about _any_ of this?" Ann asks, and it might be Ryuji's imagination, but he thinks he sees Akira flinch in the face of their combined outrage.

"I've known about this--not _exactly_ this, but kind of... generally Persona and things, for a really long time."

"And you just happen to look like the guy that attacked me when we were in the castle before?" Ryuji demands.

"I didn't do it on purpose!"

"Can everyone stop _yelling!"_

And they all do, if only out of sheer surprise at the unexpected fourth voice. They're alone, more or less, on a street that's pretty empty on a day without classes.

Ryuji's the first one to look down, and see a black cat sitting on the sidewalk right in the center of the three of them.

"Mona?" Akira says, sounding exactly as confused as Ryuji feels.

"Who else!" Morgana demands.

"You're... a talking cat," Ryuji says. "I mean--you were a talking cat in the castle too, but now you're like... actually a cat."

Morgana bristles. "I'm _not_ a cat!" he says, and the words kind of... echo. Ryuji's mind is hearing the words, but his ears hear a very feline yowling behind them. It's weird. Morgana flicks his tail in Akira's direction and says, "This guy's the one that got me out of that cell, okay?"

"Yea," Ryuji says. "But he's _also_ the Black Mask, so he was probably trying to kidnap you, or trick us or _something_."

"I'm not the Black Mask," Akira insists.

" _Sure_ you're not," Ryuji says. "Just like Morgana's not a cat."

This nets him an angry glare from both Akira and Morgana, but before either of them can say anything, they're interrupted by footsteps running toward them, and when Ryuji looks up he sees Yusuke heading right for them, trailed by a younger girl with long red hair.

Yusuke pulls up panting just in front of them--the girl almost runs into him--then takes a look at Ryuji and Ann's angry faces, and looks immediately at Akira. "It does not look like things went well," he says.

"Yea," Akira mutters, putting his hand over his face. "Not so much."

"You knew about this too?" Ann demands of Yusuke.

Yusuke takes a second to get his breath back before answering. "Well," he says eventually, and if Ryuji wasn't already angry then the perfectly calm tone of his voice in the face of _all of whatever the heck this is_ might have been enough to piss him off all on its own. "Yes."

"And you're just _okay with it_?" Ryuji says, voice rising. He doesn't know Yusuke as well as he knows Akira, but if he's okay being friends with someone like the Black Mask, then Ryuji wants nothing to do with him. The girl flinches at this shout, and Akira moves immediately so he's standing in front of her.

"Can you just calm down and listen?" he asks. "Ann, Ryuji--"

"No," Ryuji says.

"Volleyball practice is letting out," Ann says suddenly, and they all look where she's pointing to see a thin stream of students heading out of the school gates. Kamoshida's there too, occasionally saying something to one of the team members as they pass, or reaching out to pat the girls. More than one of them flinches at his touch. Ryuji scowls, and out of a feeling of general anger at the world, makes a rude gesture in Kamoshida's direction.

" _Ryuji_ ," Ann says, grabbing his arm and forcing it down. "You need to do this right now, really?"

"It's fine," Ryuji says, because he's pissed and he's scared and he wants to lash out at _someone_. He lifts the hand that Ann's not holding, and repeats the previous rude gesture.

...which Kamoshida looks up and over and in their direction just in time to see. Well, shit.

"What do you guys think you're doing loitering around here on a Sunday?" he shouts, and then starts actually walking in their direction. "You kids don't have any business being here while the school is closed!"

"We should leave," Ann says, dropping Ryuji's arm and taking a nervous step backward. 

Well, this is the absolute last thing Ryuji wants to deal with right now (even if it is kind of his fault). "We're not done with this," he says, glaring at Akira. 

"I'm seriously not the person you think I am!" Akira says. 

"We'll finish this later," Ann says, and by her tone she is very clearly trying to sound like the voice of reason. "Okay?" 

" _Akira_ ," says the redhead, now looking nervously at the volleyball coach still striding toward them.

Akira hesitates, looking between Ryuji and the girl, and then he gives in. "Fine," he says, and Ryuji only spares the time for one last glare before sprinting as fast as he can away from Kamoshida, Ann at his side. Behind them, he's vaguely aware of the other three running in the other direction.

It's only when they've slowed to a stop several blocks away, that he realizes that Morgana hadn't come with them.

-//-

_May 1_

_Evening_

-//-

It's getting late by the time the four of them--Akira, Yusuke, Futaba, and Morgana--reach Shibuya Station. Morgana is an unexpected addition to the group, with them only because Yusuke had panicked slightly and grabbed him when they all started running from Kamoshida. It's only now, as they gather to regroup outside the station, huddled in a corner while Futaba pulls herself together, that Yusuke looks down at the squirming animal and says in a tone of vague surprise, "I think I accidentally stole a cat."

" _I am not a cat!"_ Morgana says, and Yusuke's eyes go wide. He stares down for a second, then looks back up at Akira.

"I think the cat is talking," he reports.

"Yea," Akira says absently. "He does that. Futaba--"

" _Why_?"

"Are you doing okay?"

"I wasn't expecting there to be so much running around," Futaba says. She's still drawn into herself slightly, but looks a little better than she had outside Shujin with Ryuji yelling and Kamoshida storming across the street toward them. "Or angry people."

"I'm really sorry," Akira says. "I wasn't expecting that Ann and Ryuji would just... assume I was there to hurt them. I really thought we'd all be able to help."

"Can we talk about the talking cat before we get into that, please?" Yusuke asks.

Akira sighs. "His name's Morgana--right?" He directs this question to the cat, since he'd only introduced himself in the castle as his codename. Ann and Ryuji had been the one to call him Morgana when they got back to the real world. The cat nods, so Akira continues his explanation to Yusuke and Futaba. "He was locked up in a cell in the metaverse." He hesitates, then adds, "He's... a friend of Ann and Ryuji."

"But what is he?" Futaba asks. She pushes her glasses up on her nose with one finger, and leans in close with an expression of (still slightly nervous) interest.

"I'm human," Morgana says, as he finally manages to twist out of Yusuke's grasp. "I'm just... temporarily stuck like this."

They all take a second to absorb how unlikely this sounds.

"Okay," Akira says, because honestly, he's made enough enemies today, and there's not a lot to be gained right this second from arguing with Morgana that it would be pretty unlikely for a human to be turned into a cat. "Sure, why not?"

"And I'm going to get my memories _back_ ," Morgana adds, like he's expecting an argument.

"We can help," Yusuke offers. "If you think you'll need help. Whether you're human or not--" He doesn't seem to notice the _look_ he gets at this comment. "You at least deserve to have all your memories."

This support seems to take Morgana by surprise. "I... might," he admits. He sits, tail swishing nervously as he adds, "I need somewhere to stay, at least. If... any of you knows anywhere."

The other three trade glances over Morgana's head.

"Well he can't stay with me," Yusuke says. "Sensei has never allowed pets in the atelier, and there's not really anywhere there to hide him. He'll have to go back with you two."

"I can't have him in my room either," Futaba says immediately. "Cat hair and computers don't go well together."

"Then I guess you're coming back with me," Akira tells Morgana. "Only I live over a coffee shop, so I think that's technically a health code violation if anyone finds out. Do you think you'd be able to keep quiet, at least?"

"Of _course_ ," Morgana says, puffing up his tiny cat chest. "I'm one of the Phantom Thieves too, aren't I?"

"One of the what?" Yusuke asks.

"The Phantom Thieves?" Akira repeats. "That's--Ann and Ryuji were talking about that. What is it, exactly?"

Morgana gives a short but excited explanation of the Phantom Thieves, which the other three listen to with interest.

"It's a good team name," Yusuke says thoughtfully.

"Yea," Morgana says, sounding proud of himself. "It was my idea. How about you guys, do you have a name?"

"Uh," Akira says. Yusuke coughs and sort of half looks away.

Futaba nods seriously. "Yes, actually," she says, raising a finger as if she's about to start lecturing. "And it's a very good one, but obviously we don't want to tell just anybody."

"Anyway," Akira says, moving on quickly before they can get too deep into the subject of how they _still_ haven't come up with a name after close to a month. "We should probably get home, right?"

"Sensei will be missing me if I'm not back soon," Yusuke says. He hesitates, then adds, "It will probably be harder for me to get away, now that Ann's angry and I won't be able to use her as an excuse. It might be dangerous to keep using her as an alibi."

"You're probably right," Akira says reluctantly. He doesn't think that Ann would be vindictive enough to actually go to Madarame and tell him that Yusuke _hasn't_ been spending his time painting her, but he also hadn't expected her and Ryuji to be so angry. The truth is that he doesn't know what either one of them is going to do next. "We'll figure something else out."

Yusuke nods, but his face is drawn as he bids them goodbye and heads home on his own. Akira can feel his stomach flipping over the thought that it might be a very long time before he sees Yusuke again. He doesn't want to think that he's lost three friends today. "We should go too," he says at last, looking back at Morgana and Futaba. "Morgana, are you okay with hitching a ride in my bag so we don't have to carry you?"

"Okay," Morgana agrees, and obligingly hops into the bag when Akira lowers it to the ground. "You could really stand to clear some of the stuff out of here."

"It's all important," Akira says, shifting the bag around until he finds a comfortable spot for it on his shoulder. 

"Uh _huh_." Morgana puts his front paws up on Akira's shoulder and looks around as Akira starts walking. Futaba sticks close, clearly nervous about the crowds. "So where are we going, exactly? You said you live in a coffee shop?"

"Yea," Akira says. "It's called Leblanc. Futaba's guardian runs it."

"And how'd you end up there?" Morgana asks.

"That's... a long story," Akira says carefully. Morgana at least doesn't seem to have jumped to the same conclusions Ann and Ryuji had, possibly deciding that his rescue by Akira outweighs the suspicion he is the Black Mask, but Akira doesn't want to say anything that will tip the scales the other way. "Basically I was accused of assault last year--and I _know_ that doesn't sound great, after how things went with Ann and Ryuji, but I honestly never hurt anyone--and after that I came here."

"They threatened Sojiro," Futaba says. They're in the station by now, which means that Futaba's standing so close to Akira's side that he can feel her pressed against him. "He's never exactly said it, but I can put the pieces together. They made him take Akira, or else he'd lose me."

"Sojiro's her guardian," Akira explains to Morgana. "And mind for the year, too." He looks at Futaba. "I'll have to figure out a way to tell him about Morgana. He doesn't usually come up to the attic, but..." He shrugs. "It'll come out eventually. He's going to wonder why there's cat hair around everywhere, if nothing else."

Morgana jumps a little in his bag, paws beating a drumbeat against Akira's shoulder. "I'm _not_ a cat," he says.

"Maybe not," Akira says. "But you still have fur."

Futaba stands on her toes and reaches up to pick some cat fur off Akira's jacket. "You need a lint roller already," she informs him.

"Okay, okay," Morgana grumbles. "Fine! You both made your point."

"Do you think you can keep quiet when I introduce you to him?" Akira asks Morgana. "I don't think a talking cat's going to go over well."

"Don't worry about that," Morgana says. "People that haven't been to the metaverse can't understand me. They just hear meows."

"Seriously?" Akira asks. 

The cat-- _not_ a cat, but honestly it's hard to think of him as anything else--nods. Well, Akira thinks. At least that explains why they're not getting any weird looks from the people around them. 

"Weird," Futaba says.

Their train comes then, and the conversation is put on pause during the length of the ride. For one thing, Akira is suddenly very self-conscious of the fact that he's going to look like he's talking to a cat if they keep the conversation going. For another thing, Futaba is clearly uncomfortable packed into the train car with so many other people, and Akira focuses on keeping himself between her and as much of the crowds as he can manage. Once or twice, she manages to muster up enough energy to give him a _you are ridiculous and don't need to do this_ look, but most of the time she stays huddled up and seems grateful.

When the train stops at Yongen-Jaya, the two of them leave quickly, and hurry toward the backstreets. Futaba looks all too ready to run back to her room and possibly never leave it again, but Akira stops her before she can.

"Futaba," he says. "I really appreciate... I mean, things didn't go at all how I wanted them to, and you and Yusuke didn't even get to see inside that castle, but... thank you for coming all the way out to Shujin."

Futaba hesitates. "You and Yusuke are _friends_ ," she mumbles. "Of course I went."

Akira opens his mouth, then shuts it again. Smiles, and just says, "We should split up. Sojiro still doesn't want us hanging out together."

"He'll be at Leblanc," Futaba points out. "He's _always_ there at... at this time of day..."

Her voice trails off at the same moment that Akira stops dead in his tracks. They've just turned a corner, only to find Sojiro heading in the other direction, and looking exactly as happy as Akira would have expected at the sight of the two of them together.

This day just can't get _any_ better, can it?

-//-

_May 1_

_Evening_

-//-

Sojiro shepherds both kids into Leblanc, which is of course empty. They sit at the counter while he paces behind it, watching the way they keep looking at each other and at the way they keep _not_ looking at him. 

He hadn't believed it at first when one of his neighbors had stopped by to say she'd seen a redheaded teenage girl leaving his house, looking nervous. The neighbor had never seen Futaba before, and had been worried about a break in. Sojiro, of course, had recognized the vague description and known that Futaba leaving the house for _any_ reason is far more worrying than any robbery.

It had been pure luck that he'd found her and the kid at the station. He'd tried to call Futaba more than once, looked everywhere he could think of within the neighborhood, and then spent some time spent agonizing over whether calling the police would help, or if it would only increase his chances of being labelled an unfit guardian. He'd finally headed to the train station with the probably hopeless idea of checking whether anyone there had seen her, just in time to meet the two of them coming in the other direction.

"Are you okay?" he asks Futaba at last, and his voice must be harsher than he'd intended because she jumps ( _looks to Akira first_ ) and then nods at him. 

"You weren't picking up your phone," Sojiro says quietly. "I was worried."

Futaba's hand goes into her pocket for her phone immediately, and even from the other side of the counter, Sojiro can see the missed call counter on her phone as she stares at it. "I'm sorry," she says. "I didn't notice--there was so much going _on..."_

That, he can believe. She's been a shut-in ever since she came here, and now suddenly she's being dragged out of the house, to who knows where in this city? Yes, he can believe it was overwhelming for her. He just can't believe she'd done it at all. "But you're sure you're okay?" he asks again.

"Yes," Futaba says.

"Good," Sojiro says, and then with that taken care of he turns his attention to Akira. "I think," he says, very slowly. "That I was clear about the ground rules when you came here."

"You were," Akira says. "And I didn't plan on things working out this way. They just--happened."

"It was my idea!" Futaba blurts out.

"No it wasn't," Sojiro says, without taking his eyes off Akira. 

"It _was_!" Futaba insists.

"I asked her to come to my school and help me with something," Akira says, and his voice is so calm in contrast to Futaba's that Sojiro is very nearly fooled into thinking the kid isn't even upset. Then he looks down, and sees the way Akira's hands grip his knees under the counter, so tightly that the fingers are turning white. The kid notices him looking and glances down at his own hands, visibly forcing himself to relax. He takes a deep breath. "I asked her to come and help me with something," he says again. "The whole thing really was my idea. It was stupid, because I know you asked me to keep away from her, and I did it anyway. I'm--" a moment of hesitation, and then, "I'm sorry."

Sojiro considers this answer, and decides that there's something about it that stinks. Sure, a very large part of him wants to believe that _this delinquent kid_ that he's been saddled with for the year has forced Futaba into going who knows where and doing who knows what. It makes a certain level of sense, on the surface. He's obviously some kind of trouble, and now he's dragging Futaba down into it with him.

Only that doesn't explain how he got into contact with Futaba in the first place. It doesn't explain how he asked her for help and she came running across Tokyo for him, when all the begging and cajoling Sojiro could think of, for _months_ , wouldn't get her out of her room. It doesn't explain the way they keep looking at each other, like suddenly they're on the same team, and Sojiro is not.

"What did you ask her for help with?" Sojiro asks.

"Huh?"

"You called Futaba and asked her for help," Sojiro says. "What did you need help with?"

"Rescuing a cat," Akira says promptly.

"A cat," Sojiro repeats flatly.

Futaba leans down and pulls an actual cat out of Akira's bag, dropping him onto the counter. "His name's Morgana," she tells him.

Sojiro looks at the cat, which looks back up at him. At any other time, a cat on his clean countertop would have been grounds for an argument all on its own. Now, it barely even qualifies as a side issue. He meets Futaba's eyes, and sighs. "Why did you go?" he asks her. _What did he say to you that I couldn't?_ "You really went alone, with him?"

"My friend was, uh, he was in the neighborhood anyway," Akira says, before Futaba can answer. "And he was also coming to help with the cat--"

"Must have been some cat rescue," Sojiro says, eyebrows raised. "If it needed three people."

Futaba turns very slightly red, and the cat looks down at its paws, but Akira doesn't react. "Yusuke was coming anyway," he says again. "So he agreed to come by and get Futaba. They went together."

"You went with a stranger?" Sojiro asks Futaba.

"We, um..." She gives him an apologetic look. "We'd already met. Akira brought him by, a couple times."

And somehow, Sojiro has managed not to notice any of this going on right behind his back. Whatever _this_ is. "Still," he says. "You left your room and went halfway across Tokyo, with someone you'd met a couple of time--for a _cat_?"

"And for Akira," Futaba says. "He's been helping me."

"How?" Sojiro asks.

Futaba doesn't answer directly. Instead, she takes a deep breath, then leans sideways, over where Akira is sitting, and grabs a book off the little shelf next to the public phone. 

"You're going to show him _that_?" Akira asks under his breath.

Futaba doesn't answer this question, but she turns the book around so that the spine is facing Sojiro. The spine, and also the extremely small camera stuck to it. "I came in here one night last month," she explains. "You'd warned me about Akira, and... I was scared. I thought there was someone dangerous here, and I thought... I didn't know how I was going to be able to just keep living down the road from someone dangerous and not know what was going on."

"You were in here?" Sojiro asks. "This isn't the first time you've left the house?"

"I... it was..." She falters under his gaze.

"She came at the beginning of April," Akira says. Sojiro's gaze moves from Futaba to him. "In the middle of the night. I was upstairs and I heard noises. When I came down she was, uh, planting the bug." He doesn't quite meet Sojiro's eyes as says this last part, which oddly enough makes Sojiro feel very _slightly_ less upset with the kid. He recognizes that Akira is trying not to get Futaba into trouble, and appreciates this. "She ran away as soon as she saw me," Akira goes on. "But I figured out what she was doing, and moved the bug from where she'd put it over to the books."

"Why?" Sojiro asks.

"I don't know," Akira says. "Because I felt bad I'd scared her. I wanted to apologize."

"And moving the bug was your way of apologizing?" Sojiro asks.

"He used to write me notes," Futaba says. "And leave them up here so I'd see them. And he'd talk to me, until I was comfortable enough to..." She trails off. 

"To what, Futaba?" Sojiro asks. He's thinking of all the times Akira had sat in the chair in front of that bookshelf, how he'd suddenly started coming down to read or work on homework...

Futaba stares very hard at her shoes, and says, "Comfortable enough to talk to him in person," she tells the floor. "He's been coming over."

"To the _house_?" Sojiro demands. "You've been letting this kid your _room_ , Futa--"

"He's my friend!" 

The whole room goes silent at Futaba's outburst. Even the cat is staring at her.

"He's my friend," Futaba says again, more quietly. "He's... helped me to see some things more clearly. About--and what I'm missing by staying in my room all the times. And about things that happened, with my mom, and things."

That talk with Akira, Sojiro remembers. He'd suddenly seemed so interested in Wakaba, sitting _right_ there in front of what Sojiro now knows is the bookshelf with the bug, where Futaba would be able to hear everything they said. Sneaky, kid, he thinks, and studies Akira's attempt at an innocent expression. It's a pretty _good_ attempt, but doesn't quite fit naturally onto his face.

"Geeze," Sojiro mutters, shaking his head. "You two... I really don't know what to say."

"Are you going to make Akira leave?" Futaba asks.

"What?"

"I wasn't supposed to talk to Futaba while I'm here," Akira says. 

"Yea," Sojiro says. "But."

 _But_ that was because he'd been so sure Akira would hurt her. Maybe not physically--although there is that assault conviction on the kid's record--but there are all kinds of ways to hurt someone without needing to resort to violence. He hadn't expected that the two of them would end up friends. He hadn't expected Futaba to jump to defending Akira, or for Akira to try and protect her.

He never, in a thousand years, thought that Futaba would have left her room for this kid.

"Alright," he says. "Futaba, why don't you get home for now? There's a couple more things I want to talk to Akira about."

"You're not going to just kick him out today, are you?" Futaba asks. "He's not in trouble?"

"Always," Akira says, but he says it like it's some kind of old joke, and he's doing his best to smile.

"No," Sojiro says. "I'm... not kicking him out." How could he take away the only friend he's ever known her to have? "So just get home, and I'll close up early and be there soon." He braces himself for the _no_ he thinks is coming, and adds, "Maybe we can get dinner from somewhere tonight. Go out, you know." After all, she'll go out for Akira--is it too much to hope that she'll leave the house for him, too?

At first, he thinks she's not going to answer. Futaba hops off her chair, gathers her things together, and gets all the way to the door before she pauses, thinks about this, and pronounces, "Sushi."

And _then_ she leaves.

It's only one word, but it might as well have been a miracle.

Sojiro waits until Futaba is very definitely out of sight before he reaches over, puts his hand over the camera, and asks Akira, "You haven't been-- _doing_ anything with her, have you?"

"Doing...?"

"I'm not so old that I don't remember what it was like to be a teenager," Sojiro tells him. "And you've been sneaking _into her bedroom_?"

Akira's mouth drops open, and he flushes a shade of red so deep that Sojiro actually does not doubt him when he shakes his head no. The idea apparently hasn't even occurred to him, which is exactly the way Sojiro wants it to stay.

"Okay," he says. "Good. And your friend, this Yusuke? He's not trying anything either, is he?"

" _No_ ," Akira says. "I've known Yusuke since we were in elementary school. He wouldn't, I swear."

"Good," Sojiro says again. "Good." He eases back a little and, not quite looking at Akira, says, "Thank you. I've been trying to get her out of her room ever since she first came here, but--" He breaks off and shakes his head. "Anyway. Thank you."

"So... I'm really not getting kicked out, or anything?" Akira asks.

"No," Sojiro tells him. "Not for--this. No." He would have had to have been some kind of monster, and he just... can't. The kid had gone behind his back, sure. He'd lied, and done exactly what Sojiro had told him not to do. But it sounds like it had been at least as much Futaba's fault as his, and everything had worked out alright in the end. "Just no more of this, alright? No more lying and going around doing things you know damn well I won't like. No more _trouble._ "

"Okay," Akira says. The cat manages a series of _meows_ that almost sounds sarcastic, and Akira makes a face at it.

Then he catches Sojiro's raised eyebrow and stops, looking slightly embarrassed. Sojiro decides this is a good point to end the conversation. "Go put your stuff away and then help me get things cleared up back here," he says. "Apparently we're going out for sushi."

Akira hesitates, halfway to the stairs, and says, "Am I included in that 'we,' or...?"

"Sure," Sojiro says, and he's only saying it because it's obvious that there's no point in trying to keep the two of them apart from each other. They've gone and made friends behind his back anyway, and it's been so long since Futaba had any friends at all, that Sojiro's not going to turn this one away. "Why not?"

Akira lights up at this answer, so much so that Sojiro actually feels a little bad--he hasn't been _that_ closed off as a guardian, has he?

(Well, maybe he has--but there's always been Futaba to worry about, and suddenly the kid has gone from a danger to Futaba to being an ally in trying to help her)

"And is it okay if Morgana stays?" Akira asks, all in a rush, and with one foot already on the stairs. He has the definite air of trying to get this last request out before Sojiro can think of all the reasons it would be a bad idea.

He almost _does_ say no, but the cat is still sitting on the counter, looking up at him with an expression that's fairly hard to say no to. "Fine," he says. "But you're responsible for him, understand? And I _don't_ want him down here when we have customers. Keep him upstairs when people come in."

"I will, thanks!" Akira calls, and goes running up to the attic. The cat meows, and bolts up after him.

Sojiro stays where he is, shaking his head.

-//-

_May 1_

_Evening_

-//-

Dinner out with Sojiro and Futaba is weird, but not bad, and Akira's in a thoughtful mood when he gets back to Leblanc and heads up to his attic bedroom.

Morgana's waiting there, having been banned from dinner under the reasoning of _yes I hear you, you're not a cat, but you definitely look like one and I am going to sound crazy if I try to explain that you're actually my talking, cat-shaped friend I met in another dimension_. He hadn't been happy about it, but he'd agreed on the condition that Akira bring leftovers back.

"I was thinking," Morgana calls down at Akira, the second he puts one foot on the stairs. "You should bring me to school with you tomorrow."

"Should be doable," Akira says, after a short pause to think over the details of this. "You'd probably have to hang out in my desk all day, and you'd _definitely_ have to stay quiet, but we should be able to pull it off. Why, though?"

"You said that you go to the same school as Ann and Ryuji do, right?" Morgana asks.

A cold knot churns in Akira's gut. He'd _almost_ managed to forget the argument they'd had after leaving the metaverse. "Yea," he says.

"I want to come and help explain things," Morgana says. "You know, in case they're still mad."

Akira sits down at his desk, his good mood completely evaporated by now. "They probably will be," he says. "This isn't even the first time someone's decided I'm some kind of... evil, mysterious metaverse entity."

Morgana hops up onto the desk, and gives him a weird look.

"Yea, I know," Akira says with a wince. "It all got figured out eventually, last time, but it took way longer than it should have. I don't want to have to go through that again."

"See!" Morgana says. "This is exactly why you need me there. I can tell them that you got me out, and that you haven't done _anything_ evil since I've been with you."

"I guess it can't hurt," Akira says.

"I can be very convincing," Morgana says, puffing his tiny chest out. "And I can be even _more_ convincing if I have sushi."

Akira rolls his eyes, but takes the hint and hands over the leftovers he'd brought for Morgana. "It _would_ probably help," he admits. "I really don't want them to keep thinking of me as an enemy. I went in there to help."

"I know," Morgana says. "You don't have to convince _me_." The sushi has completely disappeared by this point, and Morgana gives an impressively full bodied stretch as he asks, "So it's a plan?"

"Yep," Akira agrees. "It's a plan."

He rubs at his face and yawns a little--between the trip to the movies, the run to the castle, the argument with Ann and Ryuji, and then everything with Sojiro, it's been a long day--and picks up his phone. Futaba had taken it the night after he met up with Yu, and done... _something_ that she swears up and down makes it basically immune to being hacked by anyone other than her. It's safe, apparently, but there's still a little thrill of danger as he sends a text out to Yu.

> **Yu**
> 
> Hey so remember when you used to think I was evil
> 
> Uh oh
> 
> So hypothetically, what kind of arguments might have helped to convince you that I was NOT evil
> 
> Do I want to know why you're asking these questions, first of all?
> 
> I found out today that two of my friends from school have Persona
> 
> Which is great, except that apparently there's another person they've met in the metaverse who dresses in all black and has attacked them before
> 
> ...
> 
> Listen, this might not be a conversation to have over text. Can you meet up in Mementos again?
> 
> I can meet you there after school tomorrow if nothing else horrible happens with my friends before then
> 
> Great. I'll see you then
> 
> Oh also you can meet the talking cat I met in the metaverse today
> 
> ?
> 
> He wants to come to school with me tomorrow so I'll have him with me anyway
> 
> ??

"Hey," Akira says, pulling up the camera on his phone and pointing it at where Morgana is now cleaning his paws on top of Akira's bed. "Say cheese."

"Wha--"

> **Yu**
> 
> _[image: a surprised looking Morgana with his tongue out and one paw in the air]_
> 
> This does not answer any of the questions I suddenly have

And Akira's not really planning on explaining any more right now. They're going to see each other in less than twenty four hours, and it'll be a lot easier to explain after Yu's seen Morgana in the metaverse for himself.

(And maybe he also just enjoys messing with Yu a _little_ bit)

"Hey," Morgana says, as Akira puts his phone down and plugs it in to charge for the night. "You must be tired after today. Don't you think it's time to go to sleep?"

Akira pauses, hand still on his phone, and looks at Morgana in slight confusion. "I mean," he says, after a second. "I was going to get some homework done first, actually."

"Yea," Morgana says. "But it's late. Aren't you tired?"

Well sure, because this day has been absolutely insane, but Akira has the definite feeling that if he and Morgana are going to be roommates for the foreseeable future, this is something that they're going to need to set ground rules on immediately. 

"Listen, Morgana," he says, turning around on his chair so that he can look directly at the cat. "I'm not tired yet. When I _am_ tired, I will go to bed. If _you're_ tired, then _you_ can go to bed. But we don't have to sit and have a conversation every night about how you think I should be going to bed. Okay?"

Morgana looks surprised for a second, then faintly embarrassed. "Okay," he agrees.

"Good," Akira says, and then makes a very definite point of _not_ yawning as he pulls out his math textbook. He just needs to stay up another half hour or so, _just_ enough to prove to Morgana that he doesn't need to be told when to go to bed, like he's some kind of kid.

(Fifteen minutes later, he's passed out on top of his math book, while Morgana sleeps curled up and comfortable on his bed)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to all of us who would have liked to tell Morgana while playing the game that no, actually, we do not want to go to bed yet.


	10. May 2 - May 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for attempted suicide and rape in this chapter. Skip the May 2 (morning) section if you don't want to see it.

_May 2_

_Before School_

-//-

Ann goes to school early, _much_ earlier than she would have normally, because she wants to talk to Ryuji and she needs to do it before Akira shows up for class. 

They hadn't talked much after leaving the Palace yesterday. After running for a while, they'd stopped a few streets over and _tried_ to talk things over, but the sheer surprise of finding out _what Akira is_ had rendered them incapable of any kind of serious conversation. Ryuji had kicked a mailbox and then a passing police officer had started watching them suspiciously, and they'd agreed to meet up again before school, after they've both had time to think.

It doesn't feel to Ann like she's had enough time, though. Everything in her feels all torn up and afraid, because if Akira really is the Black Mask (and it's hard to imagine that he's not, hard to imagine the sheer scale of the coincidence that would be necessary for him to _not_ be), then all the danger of the castle has suddenly followed them back to reality. Ann does not want to sit through class every single day with the person that had attacked Ryuji in the desk right behind hers. 

She's scared.

The school gates are already open, and there are a few people in the halls, but the school is still emptier inside than Ann is used to seeing. She hurries upstairs with her head down, avoiding making eye contact with anyone she happens to pass, and only stops when she gets to the roof. Ryuji's already there, looking pissed off and tired. "Hey," he says, when he sees Ann.

"Good morning," Ann says, and drops into a seat at one of the abandoned desks. Without any further preamble, she says, "So. What do we think about Akira?"

"He's dangerous," Ryuji says immediately. "And he's a good liar."

"Yea," Ann says quietly. "I was thinking about that last night--about how he must have known about us all this time, and he's just been acting like we're friends."

"We never would have suspected anything if he hadn't shown up again yesterday," Ryuji says. "We'd have just kept thinking he was some normal transfer student." 

Something about the way he says this rings a faint alarm bell for Ann. It doesn't exactly--fit. "Why do you think he _did_ show up like that?" she asks slowly. "I mean... he didn't have to. He could have just stayed out of the Palace, or not shown his face, and we _still_ wouldn't know what he is."

"I guess he probably screwed up," Ryuji says with a shrug.

"That's a pretty big thing to screw up," Ann says. "I mean, he--"

She stops as the door to the roof opens, waving Ryuji into silence. He goes quiet, but then stands quickly when Akira comes through.

"What are you doing here?" Ryuji demands. Ann stands quickly too, reaching out to put a hand on his arm before he can do anything... too Ryuji-ish.

"I thought you guys would be up here," Akira says. He's not quite looking at either of them, and the angle of the sun bouncing off his glasses makes it hard to read anything at all in his expression. "And also Morgana wanted to come talk to you." He pulls his bag off his shoulder and lowers it--Ann's relieved to see a black cat with familiar blue eyes hop out. 

"So that's where you went," she says. "Morgana, we were worried about you!"

"No kidding," Ryuji says. "We didn't spend all that time trying to get you out just so we could lose you the second we got back to the real world."

"Sorry about that," Akira says. "When Kamoshida showed up, Yusuke kind of grabbed him and we all just ran."

And he'd brought Morgana _back_ , Ann thinks. There's no reason for that, as far as she can see. 

"What did you want to talk about?" she says aloud.

" _Ann_ ," Ryuji hisses. "We don't want to talk to him!"

"Well why not?" Ann says. She's trying to sound matter of fact instead of nervous, but she's not sure that it's working. She can hear her own voice shaking slightly. "He brought Morgana back in one piece, and there's nothing he can do to us here."

"I mean--" Ryuji pulls a face. "I _guess_ , but he's still--you know."

 _Do_ they know? Ann is suddenly feeling slightly less certain.

"So we can talk now?" Akira asks.

Ann and Ryuji exchange a look, and then Ann nods at Akira. "Go ahead," she says. "Say whatever you came here to say."

"But it better be good," Ryuji adds, just in case anyone had any incorrect ideas about him being okay with this.

"I know that you guys are worried about someone you're calling the Black Mask," Akira says at once. The words have the well practiced tone of someone that's been thinking very, very hard about what they're going to say. "And I know you think that's me, which--I mean, to be honest my mask is white, so I'm not sure how that happened."

"I didn't see your mask," Ryuji says. "But I saw the rest of what you were wearing, and it looked the same as his did when he tried to kill me. Right, Ann? Definitely looked the same?" 

"Well..." She hesitates. The thing is, she's not sure that it had. Ryuji had gotten a better look at the Black Mask than she had, so if he says the clothes had been the same as what Akira had been wearing, then she's mostly willing to take his word for it. Only _mostly_ , though, because Ryuji is the kind of guy that would look at what someone's wearing and just see something weird and dark, and not care much about any other details. 

"Well... _maybe_ the clothes were the same," Ann says. 

Ryuji shoots her a look of deep betrayal.

"Probably they were the same," she allows.

Ryuji looks upset for about a second, but rallies quickly. "Then there's how easily you took out all those Shadows," he says. "The Black Mask is the only other person we've seen that can just wipe out a bunch of them at the same time."

"I don't know how your Black Mask learned to fight Shadows," Akira says. "But I've been doing this for about five years now, and those Shadows really weren't that strong. It's just practice."

"Five years," Ann says. " _Really_?"

"Yea," Akira says. "I've had my Persona since I was in elementary school."

" _How_?" Ryuji asks, and Akira grins.

"I fell into a TV," he says, as if this is the kind of perfectly normal answer a person is supposed to give to a question like that. Even Morgana looks startled.

"You did not mention that yesterday," he says.

"There was a lot going on yesterday," Akira says. "Look--can I tell you more about how I got my Persona, and all that?"

Ann considers. She's starting to feel a lot less sure that they'd been right to jump to conclusions about Akira yesterday, and knowing a little bit more about him probably would help. And if she's being honest, she really wants an explanation for how a person can just fall into a TV. "Okay," she says.

"Ann--" Ryuji starts, but Ann doesn't let him finish.

"We can still make up our minds after we hear what he has to say," she tells him.

So the four of them settle down on the roof, and Akira tells them his story. How he'd gone to the small town of Inaba in his last year of elementary school, after his parents died, where he'd spent the year lying to everyone about the fact that he'd been orphaned, doing his best to pretend that everything was fine when it wasn't.

("Why, though?" Ryuji asks, with a suspicion that has never been there in the past when Akira mentioned parts of his past)

("I guess because I was scared," Akira says. "I didn't know what else to do.")

(So _that_ was somehow the idea that seemed the most reasonable to him? _How_ , Ann wonders, but does not ask)

He explains that the metaverse in Inaba had been accessible by falling through a TV, and that instead of Palaces on the other side, there had been a pervasive yellow fog, occasionally broken up by places that were... Ann understands them as _like_ Palaces but _not_ , and occasionally visible on TV through what he calls the Midnight Channel.

(Ann doesn't exactly understand the difference between those places and Palaces, but Akira and Morgana have a tangential discussion about Treasures and alarm levels and other things that Ann is only barely beginning to understand. At the end of it, the two of them at least seem to have a better understanding of the exact differences)

Akira talks about how there had been other people with Persona in that small town, how most of them had awoken their own Persona after being dragged into the TV by someone else--a man who had been trying to protect people from being murdered by a _different_ person, who had thrown two people into the TVs that later ended up dead. Apparently, on the rare occasions that the fog had cleared from the TV World and instead descended on Inaba, it had made the Shadows crazy and violent, and...

(Ryuji pulls out his phone and googles _Yasoinaba murders 2011,_ and he, Ann, and Morgana spend a few minutes being horrified and disgusted by the pictures they find of people hung up on telephone poles)

(Ann asks what had happened to the other people thrown into the TV, the ones that had awakened their Persona instead of dying. Akira politely but firmly refuses to give any of their names, on the grounds that they've already jumped to the conclusion that _he's_ some kind of evil Persona user, and he doesn't want them to think the same thing about his friends)

He finishes by brushing very quickly over what seems to Ann to be the most important parts--how the fog from the TV World had risen up around December and almost consumed all of Inaba, but they'd stopped it in time. How the next summer they'd met another group of Persona-users called the Shadow Operatives, and stopped a second world-ending event in the same town, and then a few weeks later prevented a mass kidnapping of a concert into the metaverse by dancing at it.

(Somehow)

(Akira seems awkward and embarrassed when explaining this part)

"And that's pretty much everything," Akira says at last. "Up until I came here, and found the app, but you guys probably know about as much about that as I do by now." 

At this point, the three of them have pulled some of the unused desks that always sit up here into a loose circle, and have made themselves comfortable. They've been talking long enough that even some of Ryuji's original anger has faded, and things are... almost normal.

Well, _normal_ except that they're currently skipping first period (it had been a long explanation) to listen to Akira talk about all the times he'd watched the world almost end when he was younger.

"What about Yusuke?" Ann asks. "You've basically already admitted he has a Persona, right? Did he get that from someone shoving him into a TV when you were kids?"

"No," Akira says. "I mean--well, _very_ technically yes, but I didn't mean to fall on top of him and accidentally push him in."

Ryuji bristles.

"Seriously," Akira says quickly. "It was a genuine accident. _And_ I went in and got him out again, you can ask Yusuke yourself if you want."

"What about the other girl from yesterday?" Ann asks.

"That's Futaba," Morgana pipes up, while Akira is still hesitating over whether to say anything at all. He shoots Morgana a look but doesn't complain. "She has the same guardian as this guy."

"Only for the year," Akira says. "Then I'm... I don't know what happens after my probation's up, but she's been adopted, so she'll stay there."

(It _has_ to be Ann's imagination, but she thinks she hears the faintest trace of jealousy behind Akira's tone)

"Did she _also_ get a Persona when you guys were all kids?" Ann asks.

"Just recently," Akira says. "When we found the app on her phone." He sighs, and stands up after glancing at his phone. "Second period's going to start in about ten minutes," he says. "We could probably slip in between classes without _too_ much trouble. Or--I don't know. Ann and I probably shouldn't go in together or people are going to start gossiping about what we were doing skipping class together."

"We've already both missed first period," Ann points out. "I'm sure the rest of the class is already convinced we were off together somewhere, so there's no point pretending we weren't."

"Great," Akira says, without any enthusiasm whatsoever. "More rumors."

"Lucky us," Ann says, and cracks a smile. There's so much obvious worry behind Akira's words, though, that Ann decides to give a little. After all, if Akira _isn't_ the Black Mask, she doesn't want him to have to deal with even more. If he _is_ the Black Mask then she doesn't care, but... "You can head back to class first," she says. "I'll stay up with Ryuji a little longer."

"Thanks," Akira says.

"Hang on," Ryuji says. "Before we just go back to class like everything's okay--" He looks at Ann. "Do we believe all this?"

Ann hesitates, because the thing is that she thinks she _does_. Akira is--not at all what they'd thought he was before yesterday, but that doesn't make him the Black Mask, either. But at the same time... there's still just a little sliver of uncertainty. If her gut feeling about him is wrong, then this would be a very bad thing for it to be wrong about.

"There's one way to know for sure," she says. "We can meet up at the Palace again. If Akira's mask really is white instead of black, like he says it is, then... we were wrong."

"Sounds good to me," Akira says. "Is tomorrow okay?"

"Not today?" Ann asks.

"I have to be somewhere after school," Akira says. "But tomorrow should be free."

There's an awkward second or two while Akira gathers his stuff, opens his bag to let Morgana hop in (is he seriously going to take him to class?), then with a last goodbye, heads downstairs.

Ann loiters for a while, talking to Ryuji and occasionally checking her phone and thinking about how much time to give Akira to get back to class before she goes down. Second period ticks on toward third. She wonders what Morgana's going to do all day, and opens her mouth to ask Ryuji what he thinks. She doesn't get a chance to say anything, though, because that's when Ryuji says, "Hey--isn't that someone up on the roof of the Practice Building?"

-//-

_May 2_

_Morning_

-//-

Shiho moves as if in a dream, not thinking at all about where she's going, mind focused instead on where she's been, and what had happened to her there.

(Kamoshida's hands, his hands on her arms, on her face, his hands _everywhere,_ like bugs crawling over her skin, burrowing into her body, and she can't stop feeling them, can't stop the way her body feels dirty and infested, like she's still carrying all that around inside of her)

She isn't thinking of where she's going because she can't stop running it all over and over again in her head. She should have done something sooner. She should have said something at the beginning of the year, when Kamoshida started to look at her the way she'd watched him look at the other girls on the team last year. Or maybe the first time Kamoshida came up behind her during a meet. When he'd put his hands on her shoulders and helped her tie her hair back, while she'd sat in frozen confusion, not sure whether she should object, or if she'd just be making a scene for no reason.

What about when he'd started calling her into his office for private _talks_? Should she have said anything about what he was doing then? Or--or what about when she'd watched him starting to pay attention to Ann? 

Maybe she should have said something yesterday, Shiho thinks, as she stands in the empty hallway, swaying slightly and waiting for her feet to decide where to take her. Not back to class. She can't--she doesn't want to be looked at right now. She couldn't stand the ideas of eyes on her, watching, wondering why she's late. Will some of the other members of the volleyball team remember that Kamoshida had stopped her after practice yesterday? Will they remember that he told her there was something he needed to talk to her about before school in the morning? 

Will they remember the look in his eyes as he announced that they'd been scheduled for a tournament an hour and a half away? That they'd be excused from classes between Friday and Monday, that he's already made reservations at a hotel? Would they remember the way he winked, right at _her_ , it had seemed at the time, when he'd said he'd made sure the girls all had rooms together in one wing of the hotel, with him right at the end of the hall to make sure no one would be able to bother them? Would they remember how Kamoshida had told Shiho that she'd be on the starting lineup during the tournament, that he'd be paying special attention to her over the long weekend, that he wanted to see her for some advanced practice, only it wa _sn't volleyball he wanted to practice, it was him in her skirt all over her body and his hands, God, like bugs all over her--_

Of course no one would remember that last part. No one had been there to see it happen this morning, when Shiho showed up early, walked into his office, watched him lock the door...

She's up on the roof, suddenly, although she doesn't remember climbing the stairs. Not the roof of the academic building, which is technically off limits even though everyone ignores that, but the roof of the practice building. The one that nets you an automatic suspension if you're caught up there, because there had never been a fence installed around the edge...

It's too late to say anything now, isn't it? Everyone will want to know why she didn't speak up earlier. _Not Kamoshida_ , they'll say. He's an Olympic medalist, they'll tell her. He's doing great things for the school. Someone like that would never do what you're saying he did. Isn't it more likely that _you_ wanted it from _him_? If anything happened, which it probably didn't, don't you think that it's your fault, really?

But if she doesn't speak up, what is she going to do on the weekend, when the volleyball team goes away to the tournament? How is she going to be able to stand walking past Kamoshida's door every time she goes to her room? How is she going to be able to feel safe with him down the hall?

(What is she going to do, she wonders, when he comes by in the evening, and asks her to come help him with something in his room? What is she going to do when he doesn't have to let her go at the start of first period, because no one is going to notice that she's missing until the morning?)

The wind picks up, suddenly strong and stiff, tugging at her hair and the skirt of her uniform, like it's trying to undress her all over again. Shiho wraps her arms around herself, shivering, and stares down at the far away ground. Three floors, she thinks. That has to be--it _has_ to hurt less than letting herself be alone again with Kamoshida. How long will it take to fall three stories? 

How long will three nights with Kamoshida feel?

Falling, it turns out, takes no time at all. There's a rushing in her ears, a knot in her stomach, and the sick feeling she always gets on roller coasters just before the big drop. Only this time, there won't be a gentle slope at the bottom, no easing out of freefall into something safe, just a sudden, sharp--

-//-

Ann screams her friend's name at the top of her lungs, but there's no sign at all that Shiho can hear her from the opposite roof.

" _Fuck!_ " Ryuji says, with feeling, and he charges past her toward the door. "Ann, don't just stand there, come on!"

"But--" She can't tear her eyes off Shiho, looking small and incredibly vulnerable at this distance, standing just on the edge of the roof, looking down, staring at the ground like it's the most fascinating thing she's ever seen. 

"We're not gonna stop her just standing here!" Ryuji says, and grabs Ann by the arm to haul her away with him. 

She doesn't snap out of it for a second or two, but then she wrenches herself out of his grasp and matches him step for step as they go running down the stairs as fast as they can, taking it two or three steps at a time, flying through the stairwell. Once, Ann misses a step and falls half a flight down, tumbling to the next landing until Ryuji half helps her, half drags her back to her feet. Once, Ryuji skids around the corner of a landing too quickly, grabbing the railing just in time to stop himself from tripping face first. They're a mess, moving as fast as they can but still much too slow, and Ann wishes just for a second that they were in the metaverse, where moving always seems so much easier, where they could run for ages and only feel barely winded.

Not here, though. Not in reality. Here, she's gasping for breath before they get to the first floor, turning at the bottom of the staircase and sprinting down the hall to the doors that connect to the practice building. A door crashes open as they run past a classroom, but neither of them stops for the teacher that shouts out at them, and then they're out in the courtyard--

And they're too late. 

-//-

The landing doesn't hurt, but the moment after does, and then all the ones after that are _agony_. 

Shiho feels, distantly, a hand on hers. Her vision is blurring and breaking apart, but she sees Ann's face like she's a hundred miles away. Ann's crying, saying something, but Shiho can't hear her at all.

 _"Kamoshida_ ," she whispers, and then blackness comes up to claim her.

-//-

_May 2_

_Afternoon_

-//-

> **Akira**
> 
> i know we were planning to meet up after school, but do you think you can get to mementos earlier
> 
> Maybe a little, but I have classes today too
> 
> Why? Are you skipping school?
> 
> no
> 
> they let us out early
> 
> Why?

When Yu doesn't immediately get an answer from Akira, he does a quick search online for Shujin Academy. It's not normal for a school to just dismiss students in the middle of the day (it's not even 1:30 yet), and something about the texts from Akira are giving him a bad feeling. He skips over the school's website and a few other bland results, then hits the news report.

It's a short, matter of fact stub posted an hour or two ago, stating that a student at Shujin Academy had jumped from the school roof sometime earlier in the day. 

An update thirty minutes later adds the detail that the student is a second year student and volleyball team member named Shiho Suzui, a note that she'd been taken to a nearby hospital in critical condition, and a quote from the volleyball coach about how the accident had been such a shock to everyone.

> **Akira**
> 
> Did you know her?

Yu is on his way to the econ lecture he's supposed to be at in twenty five minutes, but there's no chance he'll be going to that now. Long minutes tick by with no response from Akira, and Yu has actually turned around and gotten on a train to Shibuya before he gets anything at all.

> **Akira**
> 
> Yes
> 
> I'm already on my way to Mementos, okay?
> 
> I'm about to go in, I'll see you there

Yu resists the urge to respond to this--Akira won't have signal while he's out of the real world anyway--and instead spends the rest of the ride mentally urging the train to go faster. He has the metanav open almost before he's off at the right stop, but forces himself to wait until he's in an empty corridor with no one around to see him disappear. 

It's not the same spot he's used to enter Mementos in the past, but it deposits him in the same entrance area as always. Akira is already there, sitting on the floor with his back against one of the disgusting looking walls, talking to--

For a second, all of Yu's concern flies out of his head as he tries to process what exactly Akira is talking to.

"This is your cat?" he asks Akira, and both of them look up, noticing him for the first time.

"Oh," Akira says. "Yea--Yu, this is Mona. It's not _technically_ his name, but he'd rather use a codename while he's in the metaverse."

"Okay?" Yu says, slightly bemused.

Akira goes on, unperturbed. "He was locked up in a castle in the metaverse that belongs to the volleyball coach at my school. Mona, this is Yu, he's basically my brother. He's the one I've mentioned from back in Inaba."

Yu takes a seat a foot or two away, and nods a hello to Mona. He's going to have questions about that, later, but he's much more concerned about the expression on Akira's face right now. "Do you want to talk about what happened?" he asks.

"A girl called Shiho jumped off the roof," Akira says. "She's... kind of a friend. We've talked a few times and had lunch with some other classmates. I don't know. I haven't been here long enough to get to know a lot of people, but... there was a time when I met her coming out of volleyball practice, she was crying, we went to a diner and we just sat there--" He takes a deep breath. "We sat there and she didn't talk about anything. But if I'd done something differently then, maybe I would have realized what was wrong, maybe--"

"You didn't _do_ anything to her," Mona says. "There's only one person to blame for this, and that's Kamoshida. _He's_ the one that--did things to her."

"Kamoshida?" Yu repeats. "That name sounds... vaguely familiar."

"That's the volleyball coach," Akira says, and Yu remembers the article he'd been reading on the way here. There had been that quote from the volleyball team coach about how sad and tragic the whole thing was.

"He's the one with the Palace," Mona says.

"Palace?"

"The, uh..." Akira gestures vaguely. "Places you can get to through the metanav. I guess the right word for them are Palaces."

Yu's quiet for a second. It's been all of four days since he and Akira last met here, but it seems like a lot's happened since then. "Why don't you tell me what's been happening?" he asks.

So Akira does, starting from the beginning and telling Yu everything that's happened since they last saw each other. He explains how he'd found out about his friends' Persona, rescuing Mona, and the misunderstanding that had led to those friends deciding he was the Black Mask. Then he gets to the events of today, and his voice falters a little as he summarizes his meeting with his friends that morning, and moves on to what had happened after he left.

"So I went back to the classroom," Akira says. "No big deal, I got some snark from the teacher for showing up late, but that's it. I hid Mona in my desk, and... a little while later, close to the start of third period, people started pointing out the window."

"We could see that girl through the window," Mona says glumly. "Shiho. You could tell she was about to jump."

"And then she did," Akira says. "It was--bad. Most of the class ran out to see what had happened, and I went with them. I got around the crowd somehow, I don't even remember how, and I got to the courtyard. People were just standing around taking pictures and gossiping." His face twists, and Yu can imagine the kinds of things that his classmates must have been saying. "Ann--"

"Codename," Mona pipes up.

" _Panther_ went to the hospital with Shiho. I'm... hoping I can find out more about what's going on with Shiho when we meet at the Palace tomorrow." 

"So you're still going to do that?" Yu asks.

"It's more important than ever, now," Akira says. "According to what some of the volleyball team was saying, I guess Kamoshida asked Shiho to come in early today for some private practice. And then, a couple of hours later... she jumped."

"That coach is a pervert," Mona says. _"And_ he's abusing the volleyball team. You can tell from his Palace."

"Or from spending more than five minutes with him," Akira adds. "So it's--not hard to guess what he must have done to her."

"He raped her," Yu says.

"Yea," Akira says quietly. He takes a deep breath. "Mona says there's a treasure in his Palace that's the source of all his distortion. If we can steal that, it undoes the distortion in the real world."

"We change his heart," Mona says. "And he never does that to anyone again."

"And that's important," Akira says. "Because--because the other thing I heard the volleyball team gossiping about, when I was hanging around trying to overhear anything people might be saying about Shiho--is that they're going away on some tournament on Friday. Three nights, just the team and Kamoshida..."

"You have to tell someone," Yu says. "You--"

"Who am I supposed to tell?" Akira demands, and there's a hot little flare of anger in his voice. "A teacher? There's no _way_ they don't see what Kamoshida's like--it'd be my word against his, and who do you think they're going to believe? A delinquent or the Olympic medalist?"

"Akira--"

"The police?" Akira goes on, bulldozing right over Yu's comment. "Because I have a record now, and I'm having a hard time trusting them after everything that happened with my assault. Yu, there's no one to tell. _No one_ is going to do anything to stop Kamoshida from hurting people like he hurt Shiho, but we can stop it all on our own."

Yu has never rarely Akira this fired up over anything. His gaze behind his mask is hard and clear, and Yu knows when he looks at Akira that there's nothing he can say to change his mind. He's not even sure that the plan Akira and Mona have come up with isn't the right thing to do. Akira has been hurt, badly, by the police and the courts that had stranded him here without his family. His friend has been hurt even worse by a teacher, whose job should have been to protect her. Akira is angry, and he should be. _Yu_ is angry, and he's not even directly involved.

"Okay," Yu says. "Do you think you're going to have any trouble getting through the Palace?"

Akira blinks. A little bit of the hard anger fades out of his face now that Yu is agreeing with him. "No," he says. "I'll definitely have Mona, Yusuke, and Futaba with me. And if everything goes okay after school tomorrow, Panther and Skull will be with us, too." He shrugs. "And from what I saw when I was in there, the Shadows are like... Pixies and Beriths."

"But those are Persona," Yu points out. "Not Shadows."

"Yea," Akira says. "But the Shadows are different here. You've seen the way I used to be able to recruit them by talking to them, back in Inaba."

Sure, a few times. Akira would stop and have a conversation with the Shadow, at which point it would transform from a table or a pile of sludge or an eyeball with a tongue into an actual Persona. 

"I guess they're just... Persona from the beginning, here," Akira says. "But when I talk to them, it's like they've forgotten what they are."

"Oh," Yu says. He considers this, and decides that it doesn't really matter much right at this moment. "But no, if they're as weak as Shadows as they are when they're Persona, they won't be a problem for you. And the Treasure?" He looks at Mona. "How hard is that going to be to get at? Is there a process? Is it guarded?"

"There _is_ something you have to do before you steal the Treasure," Morgana says. "Once we've secured our route, we have to send a calling card to the victim and tell him that we're going to steal it."

"You have to _warn_ him you're coming," Yu says blankly. "That has to be the worst ide--"

"Cool," Akira says. "Great. Perfect. He _should_ know we're coming."

Yu groans. "Akira..."

"There's no other way to do it, anyway," Mona says. "The Treasure won't be solid until we send the calling card, anyway. If we don't warn him, we _can't_ take it. So we might as well do it with some style."

"I bet Yusuke could make an awesome calling card," Akira says. 

"I can't believe it," Yu says. "You've found friends that are as much trouble as you are."

Akira shoots him a grin that is a little bit sheepish. "Yea," he admits. "It seems like that's how it's turning out." He stands up, with Mona bouncing to his feet after him. "Listen--I need to get home and do some explaining to Futaba."

"Then I won't keep you here," Yu says. "But before you go--when you texted me yesterday, you said you needed help with some friends that think you're evil?"

"Skull and Panther," Akira says. "But... honestly, I think we're going to be okay. I mean, we talked this morning and I think they're going to come around. And they care a lot about Shiho. I think stopping Kamoshida will be more important to them than fighting with me. We'll be okay."

"Okay," Yu says. "Good. I'm glad to hear it."

Akira pulls out his phone, and Yu can see him swiping through his apps for the metanav. He gets it open and then pauses, looking back at Yu. "But... if you have any advice for if it ever happens a third time..."

Yu laughs and shakes his head. "If it ever happens again," he says. "Stay calm. Answer their questions. Explain yourself."

"That's it?"

"You've been mistaken for something--or someone--you're not _twice_ now," Yu says. "And I keep thinking that if we'd talked, the whole thing would have been over so much simpler. And explaining things to your friends at school seems to have fixed that."

"Okay," Akira admits. "That's--true."

"Just... be yourself," Yu tells him. You're a good person, underneath all that trouble. Anyone that matters will see that."

Akira colors slightly. "Thanks," he says. "Anyway, I better go back, and..." he waves vaguely with one hand, clearly embarrassed by Yu's praise.

"Text me if you need me," Yu says, and watches Akira disappear. He's about to pull out his own phone and follow when he hears something move from the direction of the escalators.

And it sounds like footsteps.

-//-

_May 2_

_After School_

-//-

Akechi stands at the bottom of the escalators between the Path of Qimranut and the entrance, listening hard to the voices above him.

Voices. _Here_. It's not enough that he'd found two Persona users in that Palace by Shujin Academy, and now there are people in Mementos too?

They could be the same people, he supposes, as he stands there straining his ears to catch any part of the conversation. Only--no. He can't make out much of the actual conversation, but these are definitely two male voices, along with a third, slightly higher pitched one that's hard to identify. It had been a boy and a girl in the Shujin Palace, so there's at least one new person up here.

Whoever it is upstairs, they sound like they're getting ready to leave, and Akechi decides that this is his best chance to risk taking a look. Trusting to the shadows of Mementos and his own dark clothing to keep him hidden, he climbs halfway up the escalator, crouching as he moves. He's rewarded with the sight of two people and the cat from the castle, none of whom (luckily) seem to be looking in Akechi's direction. The first unknown person, wearing what Akechi considers normal metaverse attire (long black coat, red gloves, a glimpse of a mask over his eyes) has his phone out when Akechi takes his cautious peek, and vanishes with the cat a moment later. 

The second is older, a man maybe in his mid-twenties, and unlike the first unknown person, he actually stays around long enough for Akechi to recognize him. He's seen him by Shujin Academy, with Naoto--they're friends. Extrapolating out from there, it feels relatively safe to assume that this is the friend Naoto had mentioned to him weeks ago when she first came to ask for his help, the one who had been interested in finding Akira Kurusu. Akechi tries hard to remember the name, and eventually recalls that it had been Narukami. He hadn't been too interested at the time because, honestly, Naoto is a renowned detective, and it had seemed like she would be more of a threat.

Akechi is interested in Narukami now, though, and he carefully edges a step or two farther up to get a better look.

Which is when he misjudges a step, and the man looks suddenly back toward him. Akechi goes totally still, just for a second before the man starts to move toward him.

Retreat, he decides. There's no advantage to being seen here, especially by someone he doesn't know anything about yet. The man obviously has no Persona, he's in street clothes and has no mask, so Akechi feels reasonably confident that he'll be scared off by the first Shadow he sees down below.

Akechi speeds up as the man's footsteps clatter down the escalator after him. He wants to make sure that he stays _well_ out of sight, and Mementos is his friend here. The twisting labyrinth has enough corners to keep Akechi from ever being out in the open for long, and the flickering, uncertain lighting makes it even harder to see anything clearly. He runs for a while, around a couple of corners--

And then realizes he can still hear footsteps echoing from behind him. Not _close_ , which is good, because he's either left the man behind or lost him in the near darkness, but still coming. The Shadows that he'd been counting on haven't done anything to scare the man away. Something's wrong here. And Akechi's having trouble find a way to circle back around to the exit without risking being seen. 

This is _not_ how things were supposed to go.

Akechi reaches one of the big, open rooms that appear here and there throughout Mementos, staying as hidden as he can, bracing as the man appears suddenly in the entrance. Akechi _does not_ want to be seen down here, so he starts to work his way around the edge of the room, clinging to the shadows as he goes. He's watching now, as the man--still looking almost _offensively_ normal, even as he walks through Mementos like there's nothing wrong with it--comes further in, obviously searching. They circle the room, Akechi staying hidden, keeping as far away from the searching man as possible.

And then, as the sound of rattling chains drifts toward him, Akechi freezes. How long have they been here now? Too long, obviously. Mementos can be dangerous, and not just because of the Shadows. Lingering for too long in any one place will inevitably, with almost clocklike precision, bring the attention of the Reaper.

The Reaper is a Shadow that Akechi doesn't dare face in a fight, even after all the time he's spent building up his Personas' strength against the other Shadows here. He's ready to run, as soon as the Reaper appears. At this point, as Akechi crouches in a corner behind a pillar, holding his breath and watching Narukami, he's just hoping that the Reaper will go for the obvious target first, and Akechi will have his opportunity to get out of here.

As he hears the chains grow closer he tenses, ready to bolt. 

He watches the Reaper spot Narukami.

He watches Narukami see the Reaper.

"Oh," he says, in a tone that is not afraid, but _is_... surprised. Then he raises a hand, something blue shimmering between his fingers. 

What.

" _Persona!_ "

What follows is a fight like nothing Akechi has ever seen before. The man moves effortlessly from one Persona to another, even as the Reaper pounds against his defenses with everything he has--and the Reaper is winning, _yes_ , but it's so much closer than it should be. Akechi has never been able to do anything more than _run_ from the Reaper, but here's Narukami, summoning Persona after Persona (without a mask, in a way Akechi had not even known that Persona _could_ be summoned). 

Eventually, Akechi realizes he's just crouching in his hiding place, staring with his mouth actually open in surprise, and shakes himself out of it. Both the Reaper and _this--strange--_ Persona user are obviouslymore powerful than he is. While they're distracted fighting each other, Akechi runs as fast as he can back to the surface.

Later, back in the real world with some distance between himself and Shibuya Station, Akechi sits in a cafe with his laptop and does some actual detective work. He spends some time on the internet, searching names and places and anything else he can think of that might help, trying to learn more about Narukami. It's not very rewarding work, because there doesn't seem to be very much to find. Between the resources Akechi has after years of assisting the Tokyo police, and the ones he's been given as part of Shido's conspiracy, he's able to track down a bare bones record of an uninteresting life.

Born and raised in Tokyo, Narukami had attended good but not amazing middle and high schools. The exception seems to be his second year of high school, which had been spent in the same small town that Akechi has heard Naoto mention before--so that at least explains how they know each other. He's currently in his final year at a college in Tokyo, set to graduate near the top of his class. There are a few records of various part-time jobs, and absolutely nothing else of interest.

Akechi drops his head into his hands, thinking hard. 

Things are getting very complicated, very quickly. For two years now, Akechi has had the metaverse entirely to himself, and he's made frequent and efficient use of the Shadows there to build himself a reputation as a detective, and build up his credibility with Shido and his conspiracy. 

Now there are at _least_ five others. The cat thing (which Akechi still does not understand at all), Yu Narukami (who is strong enough to go toe to to with a Reaper), the boy Akechi had only barely glimpsed in Mementos (whose identity and power level are still unknown), and the two he'd met in the Palace near Shujin (who had seemed like complete novices). 

Those last two have the potential to be _useful_ complete novices, though, and Akechi has spent the past couple of weeks giving due consideration to how he wants to handle them. 

The best strategy would be to approach them as an ally, offer the help he's sure they need, and... _guide_ their goals through the metaverse. He has two masks and two Persona, and by attacking them with Loki, he's laid the groundwork of creating a common enemy. It would be so easy so 'accidentally' stumble on them in his white mask, to pretend to have had a similar confrontation with a villain in a black mask, and use that as a sort of introduction

But that would mean--not honesty, exactly. But something considerably closer tohonesty than Akechi is used to giving to anyone. It would mean walking up to these two strangers, and letting them know that he is a Persona-user too.

it's the most logical course of action, the one that wins him influence over a pair of naïve, fresh Persona-users, and eventually a pair of scapegoats for if things go wrong for him.

He just--hasn't put the plan into motion yet.

And now there's more Persona-users to deal with, potentially throwing all of Akechi's plans into disarray. They're very clearly _not_ new to the metaverse, and at least one of them is significantly more powerful than Akechi is, and summons a Persona in a way he hadn't thought was possible. This is someone that Akechi very much does _not_ want running around Mementos, especially not right now. More than that, he's friends with Naoto, who is an observant, skilled detective, and there is a very real risk that she will be able to put the pieces together eventually, and discover the metaverse for herself. She could ruin all of the work Akechi has put into this plan for the past two years, and he has _done too much_ to risk that happening.

Akechi thinks for a while. 

He needs both of them out of Tokyo, as soon as possible. Narukami, because he's a dangerous persona-user, and Naoto because she could easily start putting clues together into conclusions that Akechi does not want her to reach. The question is how, exactly, he's supposed to manage that.

A Shadow-related breakdown seems promising for Naoto at first, but when Akechi searches her name in Mementos, he comes away with nothing, and maybe that's not completely surprising. She seems a little too put together to have formed a distortion strong enough for a Shadow. As for Narukami, Akechi doesn't even try. He has a Persona, and as far as Akechi is aware, that means he won't ever have a Shadow in Mementos.

That leaves only the real world approach, and brings Akechi back to what had been--ironically--his original plan for dealing with Naoto. Before he found out about all these complicating factors, he'd been planning to report her interest in Akira Kurusu (who Shido had gone out of his way to ruin) to the conspiracy, and let them ruin her while his own reputation rises as a result. That can still work. As for Narukami...

One thing at a time. He'll take care of Naoto first, continue trying to find out more about Narukami--and about the other, still unknown Persona-user that had been in Mementos with him--and hope that a plan presents itself. In the meantime, there are still other things he can be working on. For example, it's about time he started working on making contact with the two Persona-users from Shujin. Before anything _else_ goes wrong.

He hurries away from the cafe, already reaching for his phone to make a call.

-//-

> **Akira**
> 
> I just wanted to give you a head's up that there's a Reaper in Mementos
> 
> A reaper?
> 
> We saw them a couple times in the TV World
> 
> I don't actually remember if you were with us yet?
> 
> Oh! No, but I remember you told me about it
> 
> That was the really strong one that almost killed you guys??
> 
> Yea
> 
> Are you okay?
> 
> I got away, I'm fine
> 
> Just be careful if you're ever in there with your friends and hear chains
> 
> Definitely
> 
> Why were you wandering around in Mementos with the Reaper though?
> 
> I thought I saw someone, but after I went down the escalator no one was there
> 
> I kept looking for a while, but never found anyone
> 
> Maybe it was the Reaper?
> 
> Must have been

-//-

_May 3_

_After School_

-//-

Akira takes the train back to Yongen-Jaya immediately after school on Tuesday, where he meets up with Futaba in Leblanc, fumbles through an excuse to Sojiro (who is watching them with a kind of bemused _what is wrong with the kids these days_ expression), and then takes the train all the way _back_ to Shujin again. 

At Shibuya they meet up with Yusuke, and the three of them, with Morgana, finish the trip into Kamoshida's Palace together.

"I'm going to work on doing the trains by myself," Futaba says, when they're hurrying up the street, to a place where they'll be close enough to Shujin to use the metanav. "So you won't all have to wait for me."

"Don't worry about it," Akira tells her. "I know that's a big step, and--"

But she gives him such a stubbornly determined _look_ that he decides it's smarter to stop arguing with her. If she says she can do it, then she'll find a way to do it. "Let me know if you need help," he says instead.

They have to loiter around for a while before they can find a place to get into the Palace where no one can see them. There's some guy in an unfamiliar school uniform shooting them suspicious looks from the other side of the street. When he finally gets bored and starts playing with his phone, Akira seizes gratefully on the chance to slip away into the metaverse.

Ann and Ryuji are there already, both of them looking nervous as they stand outside the castle and wait. Ann spots the new arrivals first, and Akira watches her eyes fly straight to his face. "Oh," she says, and seems to almost deflate as the tension drains out of her. 

"I told you," Akira says. "White mask, not black. And for the record, Yusuke's is white too, and Futaba has these weird google things."

"They're cool," Futaba informs him.

"She has these _cool_ goggle things," Akira amends.

"Shit," Ryuji says, wincing and suddenly looking everywhere other than directly at Akira. "I'm... really sorry," he says. "I just saw the outfit, and then the way you took out all those Shadows, and I thought--I mean, if you _had_ been the Black Mask, I didn't want to stick around and get my ass kicked a second time."

"It's okay," Akira says. "You thought I was evil for like, two days, it's not a big deal." He turns, so that he's facing the Palace. "Anyway. I think what we need to be focusing on now is taking Kamoshida's treasure."

"No kidding," Ryuji says, rallying immediately. "That guy needs to pay for everything he's been doing."

"We have to find the treasure today," Akira says, still considering the Palace. "Mona told me a little more about how stealing the treasure works yesterday, and we need to take a day to send a calling card before we can do it. That means that if we want him to have his change of heart before Friday when he has that volleyball tournament, we need to steal the Treasure on Thursday, and send the calling card tomorrow."

"Hang on," Ryuji says. "But then doesn't that mean we'd have to get to wherever the Treasure is _today_?"

"Yep," Akira says. He's absolutely determined that they're going to be able to do this. Shiho's still in the hospital in critical condition, and it feels like it would be letting her down to give Kamoshida the chance to do to anyone else what he'd done to her. "We can do it, though."

"But the Treasure could be anywhere in the castle," Ann argues. "There's still a lot of places Skull and I couldn't get to on our own--we might have to go through the whole castle in one day to find Kamoshida's Treasure."

"Okay," Akira says. "I mean, it might be a little time consuming, but the Shadows I saw when I was here before didn't seem that strong."

He enjoys, maybe slightly too much, the blank looks he gets from both of them. Then Ryuji says, "You're _joking_. There's no way we can get through this whole thing in one day, even if there are six of us fighting now."

"Five," Akira corrects. "Futaba's Persona is strictly navigation, so she can't fight."

"What's the point of that?" Ryuji asks. 

" _Hey,_ " Futaba says, eyes narrowing.

"Knowing what Shadows are around and when they're getting close," Akira says. "Knowing their general power level, scanning for weaknesses and tracking their attacks--there's a lot of things you can do once you have a navigator."

"Well that definitely sounds useful," Ann says. She smiles at Futaba. "Just ignore Ryuji, he doesn't think before he opens his mouth sometimes."

Ryuji has the sense to look apologetic. "Yea," he mumbles. "Sorry."

Futaba hesitates, then nods at both of them.

"We should probably get started," Yusuke says. "Even if the Shadows here are weaker, the castle itself still looks large. It will take some time to get through."

"Yea," Akira says. "Probably." He remembers long the Pyramid had taken them, and sincerely hopes that the Castle won't have as many floors. Or as many locked doors. "Everyone ready?"

"Not quite," Morgana says. "You three still need codenames."

"Oh yea," Ryuji says. "We can't have half of us walking around using codenames, and then you guys just using your regular names. Be a pretty stupid excuse for Phantom Thieves if we tried that."

"Are we part of the Phantom Thieves, now?" Yusuke asks, sounding mildly surprised.

"Well," Ryuji says. "I mean--I figure, you're helping us out with this, right? And it _is_ a cool name, especially since we're actually going in here to steal Kamoshida's Treasure..."

"Are you guys okay with that?" Morgana asks, turning his head up to look at Akira, Yusuke and Futaba. "I know you said you guys have a cool name too."

Well yes, they _had_ told him that, but only because none of them had wanted to admit that they haven't even been able to think up a good name for their group text. "You know what?" Akira tells him. "I think it probably makes more sense to all be using the same group name. And since you guys were the ones that found this Palace..."

Yusuke jumps in. "It's only polite," he says.

Futaba hides a snicker, and Akira moves the conversation quickly on. "So," he says. "Codenames?"

"Fox," Yusuke says immediately, raising one hand slightly. 

For a second Akira is surprised by the quick response, but something about the name shakes loose an old memory. Then it comes to him--the first summer in Inaba, rescuing Daiki from the TV world with Yusuke, Lavenza, and a very suspicious Teddie. They'd come up with codenames back then because Akira was afraid of Teddie repeating their real names to Yu.

He meets Yusuke's eyes, and bites back a laugh at the smile on his friend's face. They've come a _long_ way since then.

"Okay," Akira says. "Then I can be--"

"Joker," Morgana says.

"What?" Akira asks, thrown.

"I like it," Morgana says, with a little shrug. "I think it fits."

"But--" Akira starts, and then stops. It's not like it's a bad codename, really, and in a way, Trickster is.... it's not _exactly_ a codename at all. It's a label, one that Lavenza had stuck to him before he knew what it meant. He'd resented it at the beginning, annoyed at the way it seemed like she couldn't be bothered to learn his real name. And then...

And then somehow, over time, the way she said it changed. The way he felt about it changed. It became less of a label, became... softer, somehow. When she called him Trickster, it was always with a kind of pride behind it. The people that use it now ( _now that Lavenza is gone--_ ) are people that care about him. Yu, mostly. Very occasionally Nanako, if she's annoyed at him, or Yusuke. _Trickster_ feels like something that has become his name as much as _Akira_ is, to certain people.

"Joker's fine," he says.

Yusuke raises his eyebrows, but doesn't ask.

"We just need one for Futaba, then," Ryuji says. 

"She's got a navigator Persona," Ann says. "Right? Maybe something related to that?"

"Navi," Futaba suggests.

"It might be a little bit too..." Akira pauses, looking for the right way to phrase it. "On the nose?"

"Oracle," Yusuke suggests thoughtfully. "The seer of the unseen..."

"It has a nice ring to it," Ann says.

Futaba hesitates, then nods. "Sure," she says. "Okay."

"So that's everyone," Akira says. "Right? We're all good with our codenames?" He pauses to wait for agreement, then nods. He's very, very aware that everyone is looking at him, maybe because he's got the most powerful Persona, maybe because he'd come in here with some knowledge and something close to a plan. "Then I guess... let's get going." He pauses long enough to nod at the watching Justine over by the Velvet Room door, and then he takes the Phantom Thieves into the Palace.

Leads them, really, because although he hadn't intended it to work out that way, it just kind of does. He's the one with the most experience fighting Shadows, the one with more than one Persona, and more powerful Persona than anyone else has. Even Yusuke, who is closest in terms of experience and power, hasn't ever had a chance to fight Shadows as often as Akira, thanks _entirely_ to Madarame and how controlling he's always been.

So here he suddenly is. Leading.

Navigating their way through the Palace is wholly different from anything Akira has done in the metaverse before. Whenever he's been with a group this large before, it's always been kind of tagging along, letting Yu make the major decisions about how they're going to split up and how far they can push for the day. And Yu's _good_ at it--he keeps track, almost automatically, of all the little things that Akira is used to only having to worry about for himself and _maybe_ a couple other people. 

Now, with everyone looking at him as the one with obviously the most experience, Akira is suddenly having to think--who's doing okay on health, and who needs healing? If we push on to the next section without stopping for a break, will everyone still have enough energy left in case we get ambushed? How many healing items do we have left, and who needs them the most? Who should be fighting, right now, against _this_ Shadow? Who should be hanging back?

It's a lot to think about, and Akira's not sure that he's doing it right. He's at least not doing it the same way Yu does, which is pretty obvious the first time they decide to climb up the side of a tower instead of fighting their way up through it. But--well, it's _working_ , mostly, so... maybe that's okay. This isn't the Investigation Team, and Akira is getting a sharp, fast lesson in all the way that this group isn't going to be okay with just fighting the way Yu and his friends had fought back in Inaba.

(The first time Ryuji pulls out an actual shotgun and points it at a Shadow, Akira pulls the entire group over into a safe room, demands an explanation for why Ryuji is carrying an actual, working gun around with him, and then gets an explanation he only half understands about the way Shadows _expect_ real guns, and so the more realistic looking airsoft copies work like real ones here)

Akira doesn't know what it had been like, back in Inaba at the very beginning, when it had just been Yu and Yosuke and Chie, with Teddie following along behind them as they went to rescue Yukiko. He doesn't know how they figured out a way of fighting together that worked for them, how many mistakes they made at the beginning or how many things they tried that just didn't work. By the time Akira started to tag along, they had everything down to practically a science, and they'd been good at it.

But maybe, at the beginning, it had been like this. 

Maybe there had been a moment like when Ann had landed a good, solid hit against a Shadow, and Ryuji had yelled _let me at 'em!_ and she'd turned--smooth as anything--and high fived him before he hit the Shadow with a follow up attack.

Or maybe a moment like when he'd been trying to negotiate with one of the Shadows and said the wrong words, only for Yusuke to step in and say something that let Akira try again.

Maybe, there had been a moment like when they gathered in a safe room near the top of the castle, standing around a table and plotting their next move--maybe, Akira thinks, there had been a moment just like that one when Yu had looked at his friends and thought _this is it, we're a team._

(Admittedly, Yu probably hadn't had this thought mere hours after needing to convince his friends he wasn't evil, but Akira's willing to accept that as a necessary side effect of the difference between himself and Yu)

"I can't believe," Ann says, as they stand around the table, passing around the last few healing items, "That we're almost at the top. In _one_ day."

"And we're seriously close to the Treasure," Morgana says from where he's standing on the table.

"Good," Akira says, because Ann, Ryuji, and Morgana are starting to look winded and hurt, but also because he's starting to get really creeped out by some of the statues in this part of the Palace. The sooner they're out of here, the better. "Everyone ready?"

Ann makes a face--she looks exhausted, almost at her limit--but takes a deep breath and is the first one to stand up. "Yes," she says. "We have to do this for Shiho, right?"

"Right!" Ryuji says, and the group goes charging out again.

Futaba stops Akira as they're about to leave, the two of them being the last two out of the Safe Room. "Joker," she says (and it takes Akira a confused half second, still, to remember that's him). "I think you have some weird friends."

"They're your friends too, now," Akira says. "We can't do something like this and _not_ come out of it as friends, Oracle."

She looks surprised, then thoughtful, then grins. "Well," she says. "They're still weird."

"So are we," Akira says, and she laughs as he grins at her. 

The rest of it--finding the Treasure, staring at the weird, shimmery blob that Morgana insists will solidify into something less... insubstantial after they send the calling card--goes surprisingly quickly. 

"So," Yusuke says, when the six of them have spent as much time staring at the Treasure as really makes sense. "I guess we've done what we can for today."

"Route to the Treasure secured," Morgana says. "Let's get out of here and figure out who's going to make the calling card."

"Fox," Akira and Ann say immediately. 

"Hey," Ryuji says. "I could give it a tr--"

"Fox," Futaba says.

To his credit, Ryuji only complains a little bit as the Phantom Thieves head for the entrance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will probably not be a new Arena chapter this weekend. I wish I could say there was a good reason for that, but honestly I finally finished Persona Q last weekend and spent a good chunk of my writing time for the week plotting out how that's going to look in this series xD
> 
> Also, just to temper expectations early: I've decided that when I do get to writing PQ, it's going to be between the P4/P5 cast, not the P3/P4 cast. Honestly, there's just so many more interactions I want to see between P4/P5 (just the idea of Akira and Yu interacting when they're both the same age has me itching to start writing). I went back and did some looking at the timeline and where PQ fits in terms of the Forewarned timeline and it's like... a _week_ before Yu finds out Akira is the Trickster, and the sheer _drama_ of the Phantom Thieves showing up at that point has me so excited.


	11. May 3 - May 6

_May 3_

_After School_

-//-

Between Akechi's public schedule as a detective, and his private activities in the metaverse, he has missed enough school lately that he can't justify leaving early again just to stake out Shujin. Instead, he hurries there as quickly as he can after the end of the day, mentally cursing the train schedule and the crowds that slow him down. When he finally reaches his destination, it's close to an hour after the end of the school day. and the street outside Shujin has mostly clear. Akechi loiters and waits, keeping an eye out for anyone that might be observing him--there's a group across the street, one Shujin student, a boy in a different uniform, and a girl in casual clothes, who keep looking around--until eventually he's absolutely sure nobody is.

And then Akechi goes inside. He opens the app, steps through the space between the real world and the Palace, and in the half breath between when he's not fully in either space, he reaches for Robin Hood instead of Loki. His school uniform morphs into a white and gold costume, and a bright red mask calcifies across his face. When the transition ends and he has left reality behind, Akechi takes a deep breath, in and then out.

(If he's being entirely honest, he prefers Loki over Robin Hood)

(In the moments when he reaches for his Persona, it's reassuring to find Robin Hood and his justice waiting there for him, rather than Loki's cold, sharp edges)

(But Robin Hood will not lead him down the path Akechi has chosen to walk, and Loki _will_ )

Akechi prepares himself for a wait. He's not sure that the two Shujin students he's come to find are even in the Palace today, but if they're not, he's willing to come back and try again another day. This is a stakeout, and stakeouts are not always successful on the first attempt. If Akechi does not meet his target today, then he will be back here again tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, for as long as it takes.

And then, after waiting for a while, just when he's starting to think that he might as well leave and try again another day, Akechi hears voices coming toward him, and he looks up to see five people--and a cat--walking toward him.

(He had expected _two_ )

They see him in almost the same moment that Akechi sees them, and Akechi takes in their hesitation at the sight of someone unfamiliar here.

He also sees the boy walking out at the front of the group, and in a flash of cold recognition he sees that _this is the same person from Mementos_ , the one that had come in with Narukami, who might turn out to be just as strong as Narukami is.

(Akechi has not planned for this)

"Hey!" one of them shouts. It's the one in the skull mask, the one that had awakened his Persona after Akechi attacked him. "Over there! Who are you?"

Akechi raises his voice, forcing some uncertainty into his voice. "Are you all--real people?" he asks. "Not Shadows?"

"Course we are," Skull Mask says. "Who're you?"

The group comes to a stop only a few yards away. There's still a healthy space between them, but they're close enough now to have a conversation without shouting at each other.

"My name is Goro Akechi," Akechi says, injecting a sliver of nervousness into his voice. "And I've never seen anyone else in a Palace before. Who are all of you?"

The group shares a series of complicated looks between themselves, and Akechi notes the way that most of them seem to be turning to the boy from Mementos, as if he's the one that's going to be making the decision about how this is handled.

"I'm Joker," he says at last. "And this is Fox, Oracle, Mona, Panther, and Skull." He points to the rest of them one by one as he makes his introductions. Akechi notices the slight hesitation before he gives each name, as if he isn't entirely used to them yet.

"You're using codenames?" Akechi asks.

"Sure," the boy-- _Joker_ , since he hasn't given any other name--gives a lopsided grin from behind his mask. "Why not?"

Why _would_ they, Akechi wonders. "How did you find your way in here?" he asks instead.

"It's kind of a long story," Joker says.

"Hey," Skull says, in a slightly quieter voice that Akechi can hear perfectly well. "Are we sure we wanna trust this guy?"

"Well we know he's not the Black Mask," Joker points out. He pauses a second, then says, "Right? Everyone sees his mask is _red_ , just for the record? Skull?"

There's a chorus of agreement (Skull mumbles his, kicking at the ground in front of him with the toe of his shoe), during which Akechi fights to hide a wide smile. He'd expected that convincing them that he's not the Black Mask would be the most difficult part of this conversation, but they're convincing _themselves._

Mona looks up at Skull. "We're not going to have another problem like when you and Panther decided Joker was the Black Mask?" he asks. "Right?"

"Yea, yea," Skull mutters. "I got it, I'm not just going to start assuming _everyone_ we meet in here is the Black Mask."

It's just too perfect of an opportunity.

"You all have seen the Black Mask too?" Akechi asks. He widens his eyes a little, trying to seem shocked.

"Not all of us," Fox says. "But Panther and Skull have."

"The bastard attacked me," Skull says. "I woulda died if I hadn't gotten my Persona right then."

As if that hadn't been the plan. "I had the same experience," Akechi says. "He attacked me while I was in a Palace, and I was lucky to get away when I did."

Skull gives a little nonverbal hiss of sympathy, and Panther winces.

"So what are you doing here?" she asks.

"Yes," Fox says. "How did you get the metanav?"

"I don't know," Akechi says, which is the first fully true thing he's said to this group. "It was just... on my phone one day."

"Same thing happened to us," Skull says.

"It was about two years ago," Akechi says. "And I've been using it ever since then to... assist in investigations." Also, technically, true. Many of the cases he's solved were cases that he'd deliberately caused through mental shutdowns and psychotic breakdowns.

"In... investigations?" Oracle asks. She looks nervous, and does not step out from where she's standing, half-hidden behind Joker and Fox.

"I've assisted the police with their investigations in several cases," Akechi says. "And I've even gained some small amount of notoriety for it."

"Akechi," Panther says thoughtfully. "Akechi, Akechi... I've heard that name somewhere." And then her eyes go wide, and she snaps her fingers. "Oh! You've been on TV!"

"Seriously?" Skull says.

Akechi makes an honest attempt at a modest shrug in response.

(He doesn't _quite_ succeed)

"So what are you doing here?" Joker asks. "I know you said you've been using the app to help investigate, but--" He pauses, and asks, "Shiho?"

Akechi nods. He'd decided to use his work as a detective as a reasonable excuse for his metaverse experience, because it's reasonable enough (the kinds of people that commit crimes are often the kinds of people that develop Palaces). He'd then done some research into the Kamoshida this Palace belongs to, and found that just this week, a girl on the volleyball team had thrown herself off the school roof.

It had been the right choice, obviously, because the rest of the group relaxes immediately on hearing this supposed motive.

"We're going to steal Kamoshida's treasure," Mona says. "And change his heart so that he never does anything like this again."

Akechi is unimpressed by this declaration. He can assume that the Treasure they're talking about is related to the strange, obviously valuable, and just as obviously _insubstantial_ clouds that he sometimes sees deep inside Palaces. There's no way to actually steal them, though, or even touch them, so their mission is simply not going to work.

He decides to change the subject. "You know," he says. "I've been doing this for a couple of years now. If you ever need advice about anything, I would be more than happy to help."

"I don't think we'll need it," Skull says. He's the only one still looking at Akechi with any kind of distrust. "Between this guy and Mona--" He jerks a thumb in Joker's direction. "We pretty much have this figured out."

Akechi manages to school his expression as he studies Joker from behind his mask. Joker's expression goes slightly embarrassed.

The plan had been for Akechi to walk in here, with his two years of accumulated knowledge about the metaverse, and gain a reputation as someone they can come to for advice and guidance. He'd be glad to give it, especially if it pointed them down paths that would ultimately be helpful to _him_.

"But if _you_ ever wanted to come fight with _us_ ," Panther says cheerfully. "I'm sure that'd be fine with everyone, right?"

( _This had not been the plan,_ and he is not here to take advice from _them_ )

"Of course," Fox says.

"Sure," Joker says with a shrug. There's a general consensus of agreement from the others, even (with reluctance) Skull.

"Not this time," says Akechi, who had not been expecting to walk in here to find a fully formed team of Persona-users, whose plans are all going to be re-examined before he figures out what he's going to do next. "I only came here to investigate, not to fight."

"Fair enough," Joker says. "Maybe someday, though."

"Maybe someday," Akechi echoes.

He's going to need a new plan, and right now he has no idea what that plan should be. He needs to... he doesn't know. Keep distance between them. Learn more. _Something_.

Not since the first time that Akechi stumbled into the metaverse has he felt so in over his head, and he's not sure... he doesn't _know..._

First things first, he decides with a sudden snap of clarity. It's past time that he reported Naoto Shirogane's interest in Akira Kurusu to Shido's conspiracy. She consults for the same police departments that he does, and many of the people that make decisions of who to hire are either part of that conspiracy, or under the direct supervision of people that are. She won't have work, she'll leave the city, and Akechi will have one less thing to worry about.

...giving him _more_ time to worry about how to handle Akira Kurusu and Yu Narukami.

(He is in _so_ far over his head, and _Akechi does not handle being in over his head well_ )

-//-

_May 3_

_Evening_

-//-

They all leave Kamoshida's Palace together, the Phantom Thieves and Akechi. Yusuke runs off immediately when he sees what time it is, muttering something under his breath about how his sensei is going to kill him, and promising to work on the calling card overnight. Ryuji makes a comment about how it's not _that_ late, and then he actually checks the time and announces that he needs to get home soon or else his mom will also kill _him_. Ann shakes her head and then tells the others she's going to the hospital to see Shiho for a while.

And that just leaves Akira, Futaba, and Akechi standing on the sidewalk together, with Morgana curled up in Akira's bag just out of sight.

Akira does not know what to make of Akechi. He's obviously got some experience in the metaverse, but doesn't seem interested in fighting Shadows. Or at least, he'd said no to coming to help them with the Treasure--Akira reminds himself that this does not mean there's some ulterior motive here, and that Akechi seems like he's used to being alone n the metaverse. It can be dangerous, he knows from experience, to try and fight Shadows alone. Maybe Akechi has a good reason for his reluctance, especially after whatever run-in he'd had with Black Mask...

He keeps making an effort to be friendly.

"I guess we might as well introduce ourselves again now that we're back in the real world," Akira says. "I mean, you told us your name already, but..."

"You all prefer to use codenames while you're in Palaces," Akechi finishes.

"It's a new idea, actually," Akira admits with a grin. "But... I don't know. It's been kind of fun." He glances at Futaba, not sure if she wants to be introduced to a stranger--she's still keeping out of sight behind him, so Akira says, "My name's Akira Kurusu," and leaves it at that.

Akechi doesn't comment on the partial introduction. "Akira... Kurusu," he repeats slowly. " _You're...?"_

"You've heard of this guy?" Morgana asks, popping his head up out of the bag so he can look over Akira's shoulder.

"Only in passing," Akechi says, after a brief hesitation.

"Oh yea," Akira says. "You said you worked with the police, right?" He's really starting to get tired of having a record. Making trouble is something he does, something he's not ready to _stop_ doing, but getting caught is turning out to be no fun at all. And it's kind of unsettling to know that someone there has been talking about him.

"That's right," Akechi says, and Akira's sure he must be imagining the momentary hesitation before he answers.

Akira makes a face. "I promise I was framed," he says, in case that's the reason behind the vaguely unfriendly feeling he's still getting from Akechi.

"Hmm," Akechi says, and Akira sighs. For some reason, he's really getting the idea that Akechi doesn't like him.

"Listen," he says. "I know we didn't make the best first impression, but we're still learning how to work as a team. If you ever need help with an investigation in the metaverse or something, I'm sure we'd all be willing to help out."

Akechi stays skeptical, but he does at least agree to trade phone numbers with Akira before they split up, so that's something? Akechi is still a fellow Persona-user, and as far as Akira is concerned, that means that they're all, sort of, on the same team. They don't _need_ any more enemies, not on top of the Black Mask, or the weird doom Igor keeps mentioning whenever Akira visits the Velvet Room. Maybe Akechi is just one of those people that needs a little bit of time before he opens up.

Futaba doesn't say a word through this entire process, staying quiet and nervously shy at Akira's side, right up until Akechi looks like he's about to leave. Then she blurts out a "hey!" that makes him pause and look back at her.

"You won't... tell anyone about us," Futaba says. "About seeing us in Kamoshida's Palace. Will you?"

Akechi smiles at her. "It would be a little bit foolish of me to try," he says. "After all, you all know I was there as well. If I was lucky, I'd merely be labelled as insane. If I wasn't, I might face professional consequences for making up such an unbelievable lie."

Akira bites back a laugh, because _yea_ , he can just about imagine how something like that would go over. "We should be heading back," he tells Akechi. "It's getting a little late." And he's almost sure that Sojiro will be watching the clock and waiting for Akira to bring Futaba back.

"As should I," Akechi agrees. "But it was... interesting to meet you all. I've always assumed I was the only one in the city with a Persona. Seeing you all has been educational."

"Yea," Akira says. "I guess it would be." He gives Akechi a considering, sideways look, and decides to risk a little bit of advice that it doesn't seem like Akechi's going to want to hear. "I know you said you're more interested in investigating than in fighting, but..." He shrugs, trying to imply that Akechi would be welcome to join if he ever wanted to.

Akechi shoots him a disbelieving look. "You _just_ met me," he points out.

"Well," Akira says. "Yea. But I know how hard it is to fight Shadows on your own. I did it for a while, and things got a lot better when I found other people to fight with."

"Still," Akechi says. "I could be anyone. I _could_ be the Black Mask." There's something in his tone that seems almost like a test, although Akira has _no_ idea what it is he's testing for.

"I saw your mask," Akira says. "We all did. It's red." He shrugs. "And I've been mistaken for being evil enough times that I guess I'd rather give other people the benefit of the doubt."

"Hmm," Akechi says. He watches Akira for such a long time that it starts to feel vaguely uncomfortable, and then nods. "In any case, I should be going before I miss my train."

"Sure," Akira says. "We'll see you around."

When Akechi is gone, and the three of them have made it into the station and to the right platform, Akira says, "So what do you guys think?"

"He's a little weird," Futaba says immediately, as if this is a valid criticism and not an accurate description of their entire team.

"But I think he really has been doing this for a while," Morgana says, lowering his voice as they board the next train headed for home. "He seemed surprised to see all of us in the Palace, but not surprised by Palaces themselves."

"Yea," Akira agrees.

"I wonder if we'll see him again," Futaba says, voice slightly distracted as she looks down at her phone. "Hey, Mona, Sojiro's asking what kind of cat food I think you'd like."

Akechi is not mentioned at all for the rest of the trip home, as the conversation takes a sudden right turn into Morgana trying to negotiate a permanent diet of sushi instead of cat food.

(Futaba texts Sojiro that he should just buy whatever's cheapest, and Morgana's loud yowls of protests almost gets them all kicked off the train)

-//-

 _Fuck_ , Akechi thinks, as he rides his train back alone. He had not intended to walk into the Palace today and come face to face--mask to mask--with one of the two Persona-users he'd seen in Mementos. And even if he does seem surprisingly willing to trust Akechi, Akechi is _not_ willing to work with him. What he _wants_ is a group of Persona-users that know nothing about anything, and will follow his lead.

He's starting to regret ever trying to make contact in the first place. It really has not gone well for him.

-//-

_May 4_

_Afternoon_

-//-

"Justine," Caroline says, as the two of them stand guard over an empty cell in their master's Velvet Room. "What's wrong with you?"

Justine does not answer immediately. Instead, she takes the time to first consider the question, and then turn and look over her shoulder at where their master seems lost in thought and utterly uninterested in their conversation. Then she says, "Something has been bothering me."

Their inmate has not been to the Velvet Room in several days, and so Justine decides that it probably would not be such a bad thing to relax her guard for the moment, and settle down on the cool floor in front of the bars.

(Their prisoner seems, in fact, to be avoiding the place, even if he's always friendly when he sees them in the real world or in the metaverse)

Caroline joins her, sitting cross-legged and leaning forward slightly, her interest obvious. "Well?" she asks. "What's been bothering you?"

"I think our inmate has made a mistake," Justine says carefully. "I think he is making decisions without the full amount of information, and that this is going to... hurt him." She fidgets for a second or two, then says, "I have been watching what happens in the Palace that he and his friends are exploring."

"I know," Caroline says. "Did you see something there that has you this worried?"

"Yes," Justine says. "I saw someone enter the Palace, and violently attack someone else without provocation. Later, I saw him return in a different mask, so that he would be welcomed as a friend."

Caroline taps her baton against one knee, the one eye that is visible around her eyepatch turning sharp and considering. Finally, she asks, "I don't think our inmate would fall for a trick like that."

"He did," Justine says. "I watched him."

And she hadn't done anything about it. It's... not their place to interfere, is it? Their job is to oversee his rehabilitation, not to protect him from his own mistakes.

And that might have seemed convincing, except for the strange, queasy feeling that comes with it, like butterflies in her stomach, that's telling her she's making a mistake.

"Hmm," Caroline says, narrowing her eyes. " _Maybe_ ," she says. "If he is making poor choices like that, maybe it means that we haven't been doing enough to make sure he takes his rehabilitation seriously."

"Do you think so?" Justine asks. She considers, head tilted to one side as she thinks. "If that really is the case, perhaps we could... share this information with him." To help him. "To show him that he needs to be more careful in who he chooses to trus--"

"Girls," their master says.

It's only one word, soft and not particularly threatening, but Justine sits up straight as if an electric current has passed through her spine, and Caroline's fingers tighten around her baton. They look at each other, mismatched eyes locking onto each other. As different as the two of them are, there are times Justine understands Caroline's thoughts as easily as if they'd been two halves of the same person.

Right now, it is easy to see the fear in Caroline's face, because it is an exact mirror of what Justine feels.

"Yes?" Justine says, standing and turning to face their master.

"I'm sure that neither of you is considering overstepping the bounds of your role as wardens."

"No," Caroline says, scrambling upright as well. "But we do want him to finish his rehabilitation, and if he's not trusting the right people--"

"To be absolutely clear," their master says, raising his voice, and silencing Caroline in the process. "You are not to speak to him of this. There is more than one player in this game, and giving him too much information at this stage would be... an unfair advantage."

Neither of the twins answers this. Justine doesn't know what Caroline is thinking, but _she_ is wondering how sharing information with their prisoner can be an unfair advantage when their whole purpose is to help him.

(She does not know a lot of things that it feels like she should. She does not know where she has come from, how she is here, or many things about the Velvet Room and their master that it feels like she _should_ know)

(But she knows--knows with certainty beyond doubt--that her purpose here is to assist in their prisoner's rehabilitation, that she does not dare disobey their master, and that she trusts her sister absolutely)

(And that, more or less, is all that she knows)

"Girls," their master says, with a hint of warning in his tone this time.

"We understand," Caroline says reluctantly. "But--we're worried about him."

"There is no need to be worried," says their master. "Your job is to assist in his rehabilitation. Not to personally involve yourselves."

The Velvet Room goes silent again. Justine sends sideways glances toward her sister, who is shooting her complicated looks in return. For a while, Justine fills her time wishing that there was somewhere she and Caroline could go, somewhere they could talk things over without the distinctly unnerving presence of their master hovering behind them.

But in a way, they're prisoners here as well.

There's a noise from the cell behind them, and Justine turns with some relief to face their prisoner. There is something about him that is reassuring in the same way that their master is terrifying. There is something about seeing his face that makes Justine feel...

She doesn't have the words for how she is feeling. Something close to happiness, she thinks.

As always, the prisoner's gaze moves around the room, taking in the bars, his wardens, his chains, and then his expression settles into something uncomfortable and unhappy. Justine doesn't think that he much likes being locked up inside his prison cell.

He catches Justine looking at him, and manages to smile. "Hey," he says. "How are you guys doing?"

"Hey!" Caroline snaps. "Less small talk, inmate!"

Justine hears the worry in her sister's voice, the ever-present concern the two of them share that their inmate will miss something important, that he'll make a mistake, that he'll fail in whatever task has been assigned to him, in this game that neither twin knows enough about, that they are not equipped to help him survive.

"You don't need to be so harsh, Caroline," Justine says quietly. "You did say that you were worried about him."

Caroline's eye darts toward their master, and she says, "Sh--shut up, Justine!"

Justine gives a small shrug, and wishes there was more that they could say, more that they could _do_. But there is only so much that their master will allow, and only so far that either of them dares to push.

The inmate looks between the two of them, expression surprised but--Justine thinks she sees a little bit of a smile on his face.

"Uh," he says, looking between the two of them, and then (almost reluctantly, it seems to Justine) up at their master. "I came by because I think we're going into kind of a big fight tomorrow, and I wanted to fuse some Persona before then."

"Of course," says their master. "The executions are always at your disposal here."

The prisoner flinches slightly at the reminder of executions, and Justine can't exactly blame him. The fusions are unpleasant to be involved in. She's sure it must be worse for him, to be sacrificing parts of himself in the process.

But he forges on with a kind of teeth gritting determination, as if he's trying to convince himself that it won't hurt as badly if he just doesn't look at it.

After the fusions are done , and the inmate is sitting on the uncomfortable looking bed in his cell, sorting through the new Persona taking up residence in his mind, Justine speaks up.

"You've come up with an unusual combination of Persona, inmate," she says quietly.

"Hmm?" He looks up at her, eyes tired and a little bit sad. "Oh. Yea. I guess."

"I saw Persona with healing," Justine says. "Persona that strengthen allies and weaken enemies, Persona that create barriers and other defenses... I did not see any Persona that would do any real damage to an enemy Shadow."

"Oh yea," Caroline says, bristling slightly. "Inmate! What do you think you're doing with these Persona? You need to take this seriously!"

"I am!" their prisoner says. "I always have Arsene, if I'm really in trouble and need to fight my way out of something." He touches his face, where Justine knows his mask would be if he was wearing it. Here, he's barefaced, without the mask he wears in the metaverse or the glasses he wears in the real world. It makes his face look younger, and reminds Justine of how he had looked back then, back when...

(She doesn't remember what it reminds her of, or of when she could have seen the prisoner before they met in the Velvet Room)

"But why have so many other Persona that aren't going to help you to fight?" Justine asks.

"Because I'm not going to fight tomorrow," the prisoner says. "I mean--not unless things go way worse than I'm thinking they will. See--my friends have been trying to get through this Palace for weeks now, and I only just found out about it."

"So what?" Caroline asks.

"So," the inmate says. "They've put more into this than I have. And they've had to put up with Kamoshida for a lot longer, too. I mean--Shiho is Ann's best friend. She jumped off a roof because of what Kamoshida did. And Ryuji's told us how bad it was for him and the track team when Kamoshida decided to ruin that. _And_ Morgana was locked up in the prison in the Palace for weeks." His intense expression breaks suddenly as he grins, something Justine has rarely seen from him in this place. "They deserve a chance to be able to kick his ass, not just watch me do it."

"But you could do it yourself, with the right Persona," Caroline says. "You really wouldn't rather do it that way?"

"No," the prisoner says. "I'm sure there are going to be plenty of stronger Shadows we're going to run into, if we stick together as a team after Kamoshida's Palace." He shrugs. "I'll get lots of other chances to fight Shadows."

It's an interesting concept of friendship, Justine thinks. But from what she's seen of both their inmate and his friends while they're in the metaverse, she thinks that it does sound like something they would appreciate.

It's the kind of sideways way he looks at things. The kind of thing that, in Justine's opinion, makes him a good friend.

(The kind of friend that she thinks she would like to have herself)

"Anyway," their inmate says. "I should be getting back. We were going to meet up to see the calling card design Yusuke came up with, and it's going to be pretty hard to explain why I'm so late if I don't get moving soon."

"Stay safe," Justine says quietly.

"I'll do my best," the inmate tells them.

And then he's gone, and once again it's just the twins and their master, alone again in the empty prison.

In the still silence of the Velvet Room, Justine reaches for her sister's hand. She's trying not to think about how this does not make her feel any less alone, or any less trapped.

"The inmate asked me once if we could see him outside of the Velvet Room," Caroline says quietly. "I think that--maybe we should."

Justine squeezes her hand, and thinks _yes_.

-//-

_May 4_

_Afternoon_

-//-

> **Phantom Thieves**
> 
> **Futaba:** Akira
> 
> **Futaba:** Akira, Akira, Akira
> 
> **Futaba:** Akiraaaaaaaa
> 
> **Ryuji:** Seriously, where are you?
> 
> Sorry, I was somewhere without signal
> 
> I had to get my Persona figured out for tomorrow
> 
> **Ann:** What does that mean, exactly?
> 
> Long story. Anyway, did we find a place to all meet up?
> 
> **Yusuke:** We're in an accessway at Shibuya Station
> 
> Why?
> 
> **Ryuji:** Cuz we couldn't find anywhere else we could all meet up without looking weird

It takes him some time to find where everyone else is waiting, but after some wandering around, Akira finally spots them. They're in a little huddle up against a large window--Ann and Ryuji leaning against a railing talking to Yusuke, who is gesticulating enthusiastically as he tells some story, Futaba on the floor with her laptop out in front of her, batting away Morgana as he keeps trying to walk over the keyboard.

(Akira takes a second to compose his face before coming closer, because for all his protestations, sometimes Morgana is very much like a cat)

"Sorry I'm late," he says as he joins them. "Did I miss anything?"

"Not really," Ryuji says. "That Akechi guy's not coming, right?"

"Nope," Akira says. "We talked a little bit after the group split up yesterday, and honestly I don't think he likes us very much."

"His loss," Morgana says.

"Do you think this is something we need to be worried about?" Ann says. "Or...?"

"I don't think so," Akira says, after considering. "I looked him up last night, and he's this like... Instagram semi-celebrity detective?"

" _That's_ a description," Yusuke says.

"He's sort of famous and has a blog where he writes about food," Akira says. "But also there's a lot of articles about him assisting the police, so I guess he has some skills, too." He's kicking himself for not having asked Yu for Naoto's number yet, or else he'd have texted her for her opinion already. Her name has shown up with his in a couple of recent articles, and he would definitely trust her opinion of him. "I think he was serious when he said that selling us out in the metaverse would have consequences for him."

"Just checking," Ryuji says. "But we're not actually trusting this guy, right?"

"He didn't have a black mask," the rest of them chorus, more or less exactly in unison.

"Alright, alright," Ryuji says, holding his hands up in surrender. "I get it, Akechi's not a bad guy." Then he adds, in a somewhat quieter voice, "Still gives me the creeps, though."

"But he's not coming for this, anyway," Akira points out. "So we can just focus on Kamoshida and his Treasure and the calling card for today, right? We'll worry about Akechi later."

"Right," Morgana says. Ryuji looks for a second like he's going to keep arguing, but doesn't actually say anything. "So Yusuke, did you do the calling card?"

"I did," Yusuke says, and rummages in his bag until he pulls out a sheet of stiff paper, a little bit larger than an index card. It's red and black and instantly eye-catching. To Akira, who has been familiar with Yusuke's art since they were eleven years old, it also looks noticeably different from his usual style.

"I have to admit," Ryuji says. "It looks pretty good."

"I wasn't sure what to write on it," Yusuke says, as the rest of them press in closer to get a better look. "So I thought we could figure that part out together."

"What should it say, Morgana?" Akira asks. "You're the one that knows about the calling cards."

Morgana puffs himself up and immediately starts dictating what seems like possibly a slightly overdramatic condemnation of Kamoshida, but it _does_ get the point across, and it _does_ sound like something a group of Phantom Thieves would come up with, so Akira isn't going to be the one to argue.

(And anyway, there's a definite part of Akira that is _so much more excited_ by all the theatrics than he's willing to admit out loud)

_Sir Suguru Kamoshida, the unchivalrous knight of lust. You impose your twisted desires on students that cannot fight back, and we have decided to steal these perverted heart and force you to confess your sins._

_This will happen tomorrow._ _Be ready._

_\- The Phantom Thieves of Hearts_

"Okay," Akira says, when Morgana has finished his dictation. "That--that sounds pretty good."

"Can I write it on the card?" Ryuji asks.

"No," Ann says. "Your handwriting is terrible."

" _Hey!_ "

"Futaba should do it," Akira says.

"My handwriting is also terrible," Futaba says. "I type everything."

"But Yusuke did the art," Akira says. "And the rest of us go to school at Shujin, and there's a chance that someone _might_ be able to recognize our handwriting."

"Mona can do it," Futaba says.

"Morgana is a cat," Akira says.

(Then realizes his phrasing, and raises his voice slightly so he'll still be heard over Morgana's immediate objection of _I am not a cat_ )

"Morgana has _paws_ ," he says. "So his handwriting is going to be the worst out of everyone's."

"We could cut letters out of newspapers," Ann says. "Like ransom notes in old movies."

"Where are we going to get a _newspaper_?" Ryuji asks.

"It doesn't have to be an actual newspaper, I guess," Ann says. "Anything printed would be fine."

In the end, they pick up a couple of the job pamphlets from that are always stacked up in display stands around the station, and spend a semi-productive half hour leafing through them and cutting out odd phrases and words to spell out their message. Then comes the discovery that no one has anything to glue the letters down with, and Ann volunteers to take it home, finish putting it together, and make some copies on her parents' scanner.

"Why copies?" Ryuji asks.

"Because he might ignore _one_ calling card," Ann says, with grim determination. "He's not going to ignore it when there's thirty copies taped up all over the school."

"You are a little bit scary," Futaba tells her.

Ann grins.

"So that's it?" Ryuji asks. "We're done for today?"

"Hang on, actually," Akira says. "There's one more thing I wanted to bring up."

"Yea?"

"I just think--we need to be ready for the idea that we might have to fight Kamoshida's Shadow tomorrow." He's been assuming they will all along, if he's being honest. Conditioned, maybe, to think that there's always going to be a strong Shadow at the end of every mission in the metaverse. Back in Inaba, even though he hadn't been around to help the Investigation Team rescue too many people, he'd at least heard stories of facing Shadows every single time, right before they were able to bring the person out of the TV. And since coming to Tokyo he's fought--and _lost_ to--the cognition of Futaba's mother in her Pyramid.

He's not going to walk into Kamoshida's Palace tomorrow and assume that they'll be walking out of there without fighting his Shadow. He's going to make sure that all of them are ready.

"I don't think we'll have to," Morgana says. "His Palace is centered around his Shadow and his Treasure, but that doesn't mean that one's going to show up just because we're trying to steal the other one."

"It'd make sense that his Shadow would show up to guard it, though," Akira points out. "Especially since we have to tell him we're going to steal it."

"Okay," Morgana admits, deflating a little. "That's true."

"His Shadow will likely be much more powerful than the others in the Palace," Yusuke muses.

"For sure," Futaba says. "I was getting readings off him in the Palace even when we weren't that close to him."

"Will you guys be able to handle it?" Ann asks. "Akira, Yusuke?"

"We'll _all_ be able to handle it," Akira says firmly. "I want you, me, Ryuji, and Morgana to face him, with Futaba navigating--"

"Duh," Futaba says.

"And Yusuke as backup," Akira continues.

"Not that I don't wanna punch the bastard's face in," Ryuji says. "But you do know Yusuke's way stronger than us, right?" He gestures to himself, Ann, and Morgana. "Dunno if it makes sense to make _him_ the one sitting this one out."

"Yea," Akira says. "But you, Ann, and Morgana are the ones that _deserve_ to punch him in the face. You'll be fine."

"If you say so," Ryuji says. His expression is surprised for just a second, and then suddenly determined. "I'm definitely not saying no."

"I have a Persona with recarm ready just in case," Akira assures him.

"What's that one do?"

"Brings you back up if you lose consciousness," Akira says.

"Great," Ryuji says. "Sounds fun."

"You'll see," Akira says. "It'll be fine."

-//-

_May 5_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Futaba's first trip to Shujin by herself is on the day the Phantom Thieves plan to steal Kamoshida's Treasure.

So far, either Akira or Yusuke has come back to meet her in Yongen-Jaya every time they go into the Palace, but since today is so important, she'd insisted that she could do it by herself, that no one needs to come and get her, that she knows the route and the crowds will be fine, and--

And she's not sure, sitting in Leblanc with Sojiro, that she's ready for this after all.

Forget fighting Kamoshida's Shadow, if they actually end up having to do that. Futaba's way more nervous about just _getting_ there.

"You're antsy today," Sojiro says, the fifth or sixth time Futaba checks the time on her phone. "Everything going okay with you and those new friends of yours?"

"Yea," Futaba says. "I'm--going to meet up with them after they get out of school."

He raises his eyebrows at her. Sojiro can have very expressive eyebrows when he wants to, and this is one of those times. Futaba stares at her phone again so she won't have to look at them. "They're not coming here to get you?" he asks.

"No," Futaba says. "I felt bad asking Akira to keep coming all the way back here, and Yusuke's school pass doesn't cover the line to Yongen-Jaya, so I said... I said I'd do it myself."

"Well there's no shame in backing out if you're not feeling ready," Sojiro tells her. "A couple weeks ago you were shut up in your bedroom, remember. Even if you need help, you've made..." He clears his throat. "You've made a lot of progress. And I'm... well, I'm proud of you, Futaba."

She stares at her phone, at the eye of the metanav staring back at her. It's _not_ okay if she can't do this, she knows, because she's the Phantom Thieves' navigator, and if she's not there, it's going to make things a lot harder for everyone else. She might not be as vital to the plan as any of the rest of them, she might not be able to fight, but she can do something that none of the rest of them can.

And so she has to be there.

"I can do it," she tells Sojiro, hopping off her seat and putting her phone away.

"Well," he says. "If you say you can, then I believe you."

Futaba gives him a determined nod, even though she _doesn't_ know that she can. But she knows that she needs to, and maybe that's almost as good.

"Try and text me when you meet up with them, at least," he says. "I'll worry less when I know you're not on your own. And come home with Akira."

"I thought you didn't even _like_ him," Futaba says, with as dramatic an eye roll as she can manage, considering how badly her nerves are jangling.

"The kid's growing on me," Sojiro says gruffly.

"I'll tell him you said that," Futaba says.

"Don't you dare," he says, and Futaba actually laughs.

"I'm going to miss the train," she says. "But I'll tell Akira what you said."

" _Futaba!_ "

Buoyed up slightly by the conversation with Sojiro, she manages to get to the station and onto the next train heading to Shibuya before her anxiety manages to creep up and blindside her with a sneak attack.

It's actually kind of lucky, she tries to convince herself, that it hits her where it does. If she'd still been in Yongen-Jaya, it would have been possible to turn around and go home. There's no chance of that now that she's on the train, though, because what is she going to do? Jump out of the train and run home? It's already moving, so there's nowhere to retreat to even if she'd wanted.

(It doesn't help the creeping feelings of fear and anxiety, but she works hard to convince herself that it does, a little)

And then after the train stops at Shibuya, of course she has to keep going, because the train to Aoyama-Itchome is leaving in five minutes but the next train going back to Yongen-Jaya doesn't leave for another _ten_ , so really it's a lot better to keep going forward instead of trying to go back. And stopping here, alone, in the middle of Shibuya Station, is so much not an option that it isn't even funny.

She knows which train to take, and manages to scuttle from one train to the next without incident, even if her heart is pounding the whole time like it's trying to escape her chest.

And then, sitting on the new train, something unexpected happens.

As she sits there, thinking ahead to Kamoshida's Palace and the Treasure they're about to steal, she starts to feel Necronomicon buzzing in the back of her mind. She's gotten a little used to her Persona in her head, the way it makes her feel closer to whole than she has in a very long time. But today, as she gets closer and closer to the Palace, it just hits her that this doesn't _matter_. Not in the way that it's seemed like it has for the past couple of years.

A crowded train ride between Yongen-Jaya and Aoyame-Itchome? That's nothing because she's _fighting Shadows and stealing Treasures with the Phantom Thieves_ , and she is stronger than she thinks she is.

It doesn't make her feel any less rubbed raw by the crowds and the sounds and the everything-all-at-once of Tokyo, doesn't make her feel less like an open nerve exposed to air, but this is new, and it takes practice, and it'll come in time.

For today, at least, Futaba is able to hold her head high instead of staring at her shoes for the rest of the trip to Shujin.

She makes it there just as the final bell is ringing, which means that she's there to watch as the first trickle of students leaving swell gradually into a flood. At first she's not all that interested in any of them, but gradually she starts to hear snatches of what they're talking about.

_"Did you hear what Kamoshida did when he saw those cards?"_

_"I heard he wants whoever put them up expelled."_

_"But no one knows who put them up!"_

_"How do you think they did it?"_

_"Never mind that, how do you think they're going to steal his heart?"_

When Yusuke shows up a few minutes later, Futaba almost jumps at him out of sheer excitement. "Listen!" she says, her voice a hiss because she doesn't dare speak too loudly. "They're talking about _us_."

"The plan to get the calling card to Kamoshida must have worked, then," Yusuke says. He tilts his head slightly to one side to focus as he listens, and after a while he nods. "I know that we had to get Kamoshida's attention before we could steal his heart, but it did not occur to me that we would be getting the attention of everyone else at the school as well."

Futaba sort of hadn't thought of it either, and somehow it makes the stakes seem higher. If they fail, they already know that they won't get another chance at stealing the Treasure--Morgana had been clear about that. And not stealing the Treasure means letting Kamoshida keep on doing whatever he wants to the volleyball team, which is not acceptable.

But now on top of that, it's their pride as Phantom Thieves on the line. And Futaba hadn't realized how much pride she has in them, how much it _matters_ to her if this works or not, until she's standing here on the edge of the crowd, listening to the way people talk. It's not that she wants to be famous--she's still having a hard time leaving the house on her own, and being famous is pretty much the last thing she wants.

It's just that she doesn't want them to fail while everyone is watching, either.

"There they are!" someone shouts, and when Futaba looks down that way she sees that it's Ryuji, of course, with Akira and Ann a step or two behind, talking about something that Futaba is much too far away to hear.

The three of them--plus Morgana, who is hiding in Akira's bag but pokes his head out to say hello--gather up into a huddle to talk.

"It sounds like the calling card delivery went well," Yusuke says.

"Sure did," Ryuji says. "Kamoshida's been stomping around all day trying to figure out who did it, it's been _awesome_."

"He doesn't suspect any of you," Yusuke asks. "Does he?"

"No," Akira says. "I don't think he suspects anyone yet, he's just generally pissed off." He smirks, an expression that makes it hard not to think of him in his mask in the metaverse.

" _Yet_ ," Morgana says. "He doesn't suspect anyone _yet_."

"Well we're going to steal his Treasure today," Ann says. "And after that it won't matter. Right, Morgana?"

"Right!" Morgana says, and then adds, "I'm _pretty_ sure."

All of them turn and look at him.

" _Pretty_ sure?" Ryuji echoes.

"It'll be fine!" Morgana says.

"Probably fine," Futaba points out, which gets her a look from Morgana.

"Okay then," Akira says. "Let's go steal his Treasure."

-//-

_May 5_

_After School_

-//-

Akira can feel the difference in the Palace as soon as they get there, the high alert tingling over his skin like the buzz of electricity, and the movement of the Shadows more frantic and watchful than usual. The alarm level has shot up overnight, just like Morgana had warned them it would.

"Everyone ready?" he asks, even though it's a little too late to back out or change their plan now.

"Let's go get it already!" Skull says, and so that's exactly what they do.

Getting to the Treasure isn't the hard part. Even with alarm levels higher than they had been last time the group was here, moving through the castle and staying is easy now that they know their way around. In no time at all they're up at the top where the Treasure is.

It's not a glowing blob anymore, Akira notices (in the split second before he sees Kamoshida's Shadow standing in front of it, and turns his attention in that direction). It's a crown now, solid and gleaming gold in the light.

"Whoa," Ann gasps. "I knew it was going to change, but I didn't think it would look like-- _that_."

"Mmm," Akira says, only half listening as his gaze sweeps over the large, open room in front of them. What are the chances, he wonders, of any of them getting all the way to the Treasure without being spotted by Kamoshida's Shadow? And even if they make it, getting back out with the crown would be a whole other problem. Akira's not even sure if there would be some kind of alarm on it--for all he knows, the second one of them takes it, every Shadow in the Palace will come running straight at them, with Kamoshida leading the way.

"We're going to have to fight before we even try going for the Treasure," he announces, and is glad that he'd thought far enough ahead to see this coming. "I don't like our chances if we try and go in quietly and get caught."

Which is a good plan, except for the part where they have to walk right into the room where Kamoshida is waiting, except for the part where Akira's going to be the one at the front, except for the part where if he's wrong and this _isn't_ the best way to get at the Treasure--

Don't think like that. Everything's going to be fine.

So he nods at Yusuke and Futaba to stay well back, and takes the other three into the room with Kamoshida and the Treasure.

"You!" Kamoshida says. "I should have known you were the ones that would come here to try and steal from me."

"Who said anything about _trying_?" Akira says, because now that he's led his friends into this fight, suddenly he's terrified that it's the wrong choice and they're going to be hurt--but he doesn't _dare_ show a trace of that fear in his words. "We're going to take your Treasure."

"You?" the Shadow sneers. "A bunch of delinquent nobodies and their pet cat?"

" _Hey!_ "

"Yes," Akira says.

"Who do you think you are?" Kamoshida demands.

Akira takes a deep breath. "We're the Phantom Thieves," he tells Kamoshida, and as he says the words he feels some of his false bravado calcifying into real confidence. "And we've come to steal your heart."

(This is the best kind of trouble he's ever managed to get himself into)

Kamoshida's Shadow lets out a loud, undulating _scream_ that seems to stretch on and on and on, and then he transforms. Not in the same way the other Shadows they've seen, or at leas, not into Persona, like they've seen those Shadows transform into. This is something huge and pink, with Kamoshida's face and an enormous purple tongue. It's also wearing the Treasure-crown, which is annoying but not _terrible_ , since they'd already known they were going to have to defeat the Shadow before they could steal it, but it's still not a great look.

 _"_ What the actual fuck, Joker?" Ryuji demands. "Mona? _Nobody mentioned this was going to happen_."

Akira shrugs helplessly. "Sorry," he says. "I forgot."

"Does this usually happen?" Ann asks.

"Yes," Akira admits. "Kind of? But everyone's Shadows look different, and it's the kind of thing you try and block out, you know? Also, _duck_."

The Shadow has taken advantage of their distraction to launch an attack at all three of them. Akira jumps out of the way with time to spare, pulling Ann--who happens to be closest--with him, and Morgana manages to get a guard up that blocks most of it, but Ryuji gets hit full on.

"Skull!" Morgana shouts. "Pay attention!"

"I got it, I got it..."

Akira calls a Persona that casts _diarama,_ which he's pretty sure will bring him back up to full health. "I want you guys attacking with everything you have," he tells the other three. "Just focus on doing as much damage as you can."

"You really sure about that?" Ann asks. "I mean, you're the one that's going to be able to actually damage him."

Akira grins at her and shakes his head. "Trust me," he says.

And then he spends the rest of the fight casting healing and buffs, protecting everyone else and keeping them as healthy as they can while they alternate between setting him on fire and punching him in the face. It's a fight like he's never been in before, because _this_ has never been his role. In a smaller fight, there's no time to spare on the kind of strategy he's going for now, because the only thing anyone can do is attack and attack and _attack_ , and hope that the Shadows drop before they do.

Now, with a whole group, there's more room to breathe. That, and the fact that Akira could probably have taken this Shadow on when he was eleven, means that he can afford to sit back and focus on helping his friends attack rather than doing it himself.

There are a couple times when something happens in the fight to throw Akira off his game a little bit. The first time they catch Kamoshida's Shadow leering at Ann (and spend the next several seconds making disgusted faces), none of them thinks that she should probably be bracing for a hit. She screams bloody murder when his enormous purple tongue _licks_ her, and her next retaliatory attack hits so hard that it staggers Kamoshida for a second or two. Then there's the trophy cup he conjures out of nowhere, full of--

(Nope)

(He's not even going to look at that)

( _legs, it's legs, it's a bunch of naked, purple girls' legs in a giant cup and now it's healing him no nope not okay stop looking at it_ )

So yea, there are a couple of times in the fight when Akira gets a little bit distracted, but overall it goes generally _fine_. They keep whittling away at the Shadow's health, Ann, Ryuji, and Morgana throwing everything they have at it, while Akira keeps the three of them healed and as buffed up as he can manage.

They're very definitely winning, but haven't won _yet_ , and they're all starting to feel a little bit tired, when Akira realizes that Yusuke has left the place where he and Futaba have been standing in the back of the room, and has started to move into a new position to one side of and _above_ the fight.

"Fox?" Akira says, keeping his voice low because he knows Futaba's Persona will pick the words up anyway. "Oracle? Is something going on that we need to know about?"

"Nothing," Futaba says, with so much obvious glee in her voice that Akira does not buy it for a second.

"We have a plan," Yusuke adds. "As long as you four can keep Kamoshida's attention on you and away from me, I think it should work."

"Is it a good plan?" Akira asks.

"Potentially," Yusuke says.

"Good enough for me," Akira says. "Okay, everyone else--focus on keeping the Shadow's attention on us for a while."

But Akira lets _his_ attention stray sideways several times toward Yusuke, who has managed to get up onto the second level of the room, using the kind of agility that comes so naturally in the metaverse but would be basically impossible for any of them in the real world. He's half curious about the plan and half worried that Yusuke's going to accidentally walk into the line of fire (either Kamoshida's or the rest of the Thieves'), so he watches without being too obvious about it.

And then Yusuke does a flying leap off the second floor, kicking the crown _off_ Kamoshida's head, grabbing it and rolling as he falls.

 _All_ of them are staring now.

"Yea, Fox!" Ryuji shouts.

"Good distraction," Morgana adds. "Let's--"

But whatever Morgana was going to say is drowned out by the sound of a bellow of pain from Kamoshida's Shadow, who flails pathetically but does not attack.

"Everyone attack!" Akira calls. "On three, ready? One, two-- _three!"_

For some reason, without the crown, every hit they land seems to do so much more damage than they'd been managing only a few seconds ago. All four of them go running in for an all out attack, and at the end of it--

At the end of it, Kamoshida's Shadow collapses back into his humanoid form, and Akira knows that they've won.

There's not much left, after that. Ryuji attempts to kick the Shadow, Ann holds him back, and as Morgana shouts in the background that they _can't_ kill a person's Shadow, that _bad things will happen_ , Akira goes instead and does what he's always done with Shadows.

He talks to it.

"You can't do the kinds of things that you did to the people at Shujin," he tells the Shadow, as it snivels on the floor. "And you can't let people keep suffering in silence, like Shiho did, like it's all their fault." He doesn't want to recruit this Shadow, obviously (because Kamoshida is horrible and his Shadow is just as bad), but it feels... natural, in a way, to stand here after the fight is over and say this. He's not sure if it'll help, if any of it's going to get through to the real Kamoshida, but it's worth a try.

"Don't kill me," it pleads. "Please!"

"We're not gonna kill you," Ryuji says, as the rest of the Theives walk over to join them. "But you have to own up to all that shit you did."

The Shadow doesn't say anything, just nods and cries as the castle starts to shake slightly, and Akira figures they're probably done their job here.

"We should get out of here with the Treasure before this place collapses," he says. "Like the Pyramid did."

"Collapses?" Ann repeats, eyes going wide.

"Who has the Treasure?" Akira asks, ignoring her question for the moment. The shaking is getting worse, and he can hear distant crashing from elsewhere in the castle, so the collapsing part is going to be really obvious in a minute or two.

"Mona's doing, uh... _something_ with it," Ryuji says, and Akira looks where he's pointing to see Morgana practically meowing as he jumps around the crown.

"Uh," he says.

"We can figure it out later!" Futaba says. "This place is about to disappear, we have to get out now!"

Akira shakes his head sharply, then runs over and grabs the crown and Morgana all together and follows the rest of the group as they all start to run.

(They make it, barely, diving for the castle's exit, Futaba holding her phone in front of her like a weapon, app already open to get them back to the real world as soon as they're in range of the exit, sending them all skidding along the hard road outside Shujin)

(The knee on Ryuji's uniform tears open and Akira gets a face full of gravel but if those are the worst injuries they're going to walk away with then _that is a win_ )

The crown, when he looks down at it, has shrunk down to something smaller and much less impressive.

"I guess this was distorted too," he says, holding it up for the rest of the group to inspect.

"His Olympics medal," Ann says, as the shining disc catches the light.

"Guess something like that'd go to anyone's head," Ryuji says. He stands up, ignoring the car that honks at him to get out of the road, and ambles over to where the rest of them have already regrouped on the sidewalk. "Did it work, though? We stole this thing, does that seriously mean we stole his heart?"

"We'll have to wait and see," Morgana says. "It might take a little bit of time to get through to him."

"The volleyball trip starts tomorrow morning," Akira says. "Let's hope it happens _fast_."

-//-

_May 6_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Yu has set up a news alert for both Akira's school and the coffee shop where he's staying, under the general idea that anywhere the Trickster spends too much time will eventually end up attracting trouble. This pays off on Friday, when around lunchtime his phone starts to ping with notifications.

**_Olympic Medalist Confesses to Abusing Students_ **

**_Volleyball Coach Resigns after Breakdown_ **

**_High School Volleyball Coach has Heart Stolen!_ **

There's more articles than Yu would have expected for the coach of a volleyball team at a high school, but then again Kamoshida had been an Olympic level athlete, and that's probably enough to attract attention to him.

He skims quickly through the first few articles, and lingers on the one that mentions a stolen heart. It's a less reputable site than the others, but has a few clear pictures of the so-called calling cards that had been hung up at the school two days before. Yu reads the text on the card in the picture three times.

He realizes he's smiling, and doesn't bother to wipe the expression off his face, because even if he hadn't known that Akira was planning to do something to Kamoshida, it would have been impossible to look at those cards and not see the Trickster's hand in it. He thinks about texting Akira, then checks the time and realizes that there's still almost an hour before the end of the school day. Then he considers sending the article to Dojima, decides that he probably needs to take some time and think through how he wants to handle that so that his uncle doesn't either call and start demanding information Yu doesn't have yet, or just drive up to Tokyo to lecture Akira, probation or no probation.

In the end he decides to text Akira anyway, figuring he'll at least get an answer when Akira gets out of school for the day.

(It really shouldn't surprise him when he gets an answer immediately, instead)

> **Akira**
> 
> I saw the articles about your school. I guess that means everything went okay?
> 
> !!!
> 
> It was awesome, Yu, it was so cool and it definitely worked and I wasn't worried at all
> 
> Aren't you supposed to be in class?
> 
> I'm in class, I'm just not paying attention

Since Akira's excited enthusiasm is coming through loud and clear even through his texts, Yu decides it's not worth pushing the issue. After what basically amounts to a successful heist within the metaverse, it's probably too much to expect Akira to focus on school right this second.

> **Akira**
> 
> I'd love to hear about it. Mementos?
> 
> I was actually going to go with Futaba today so she can get a scan of it
> 
> Morgana says he knows some stuff about it he wants to tell the rest of us, and I want to make sure there's no more surprises like the Reaper first

Probably a good idea, Yu has to admit. Rise has already done a scan of her own, when the two of them met up there with Naoto, but it might not be a bad idea to ask her to come by again, too. She's had more experience than Akira's team's navigator, and the two of them might even catch something together that Rise had missed the first time.

> **Akira**
> 
> I can text Futaba and see if she's okay with meeting you, though?
> 
> Sure, I'd like to meet her
> 
> And I might see if Rise can get away from work. Two navigators are better than one, right?
> 
> I'll ask

He's still waiting for Akira's answer when Naoto texts him.

> **Naoto**
> 
> There's something I need to talk to you about. Can we meet up today?
> 
> I just finished making plans to see Akira and one of his friends in Mementos
> 
> And maybe Rise. we can meet after?

The _typing_ icon appears and disappears several times, showing more uncertainty than is normal for Naoto.

> **Naoto**
> 
> This might actually concern Akira as well
> 
> I'm not certain yet
> 
> Well why don't you meet us there, then? One more person can't hurt

Akira gets back to him saying that Futaba is apparently up for meeting him and Rise, and even the addition of Naoto to the group doesn't turn out to be a dealbreaker.

It hits Yu, as he tells Akira to at least try to pay _some_ attention and puts his phone away, that this will be the first time that part of the Investigation Team and the newly minted Phantom Thieves will be meeting up.

It's definitely going to be interesting.

He heads for Mementos, figuring Akira's almost done with school by now anyway and he might as well be early, but he's not the first one there. By the time his train stops at Shibuya and he's found a relatively empty place to go through, there's a girl there. She's wearing an outfit so strange that it's easy to pick her out as part of Akira's group, and sitting cross legged on the ground and typing on a laptop keyboard so fast her fingers blur.

She doesn't notice him until Yu clears his throat, and then she jerks back and stares up at him, eyes wide behind a set of goggles.

"You must be Futaba," he guesses.

"Oracle," she corrects him, after about ten seconds in which she says nothing at all.

"Sorry," Yu says. "I forgot you're all using codenames." Futaba still looks a little nervous, so Yu says, "You're the one that found my phone number for Akira, right? You're Alibaba?"

"Joker," she says.

"What?"

"That's his codename."

For some reason, it has not occurred to Yu that Akira would be using a codename too. He certainly hadn't mentioned it, and Yu wonders why he'd picked that one. "Sorry," he says again, instead.

Futaba doesn't look at him, half shrugs, and admits, "I'm still getting used to them, too. And yea, I found your number for him."

"Thank you," Yu says, as sincerely as he can.

Futaba mumbles something, but also relaxes slightly. Yu decides to give her some space, and backs up a little, nodding a hello to Justine as he does so. She hesitates, then nods back at him.

They don't have much longer to wait before Akira comes tumbling with less than his usual grace (but much more enthusiasm than usual) into Mementos. Morgana's a step or two behind, looking as... _Morgana_ - _ish_ as he had last time.

"Made it okay?" Akira asks Futaba, before doing anything else.

"You're as bad as Sojiro," she tells him, rolling her eyes. "Your friend's here."

Akira turns (Yu sees the slight flicker of a grin in his expression when he spots Justine, but doesn't think Futaba does), then spots Yu. "So you two have met?" he asks, gesturing between Yu and Futaba. "I don't need to do introductions or anything?"

"We're good," Yu assures him.

"Great," Akira says, sitting down next to Futaba. Morgana stays nearby, but standing. "Do you know when Naoto and Rise are supposed to be getting here?"

"Rise should be here soon," Yu says. "But I don't think Naoto had even left yet when I got here. She said she needed to check something first."

"They're both on your team?" Morgana asks. "Akira hasn't talked about them too much."

"Yes he does," Futaba says. Her attention has gone back to her laptop, and she seems to have relaxed now that Akira and Morgana are with her. "He talks about Yu _all the time_."

Does he?

"Not all the time," Akira says, pulling a face.

"I meant the rest of the team," Morgana says. " _I_ haven't heard him talk about them much, anyway."

Akira still looks slightly embarrassed, and doesn't say anything. "They're part of the Investigation Team," Yu agrees. "What about you guys? There's more than just you three, right?"

Akira counts off on his fingers. "Fox--that's Yusuke--"

"What's the point of codenames if you're just going to say their real names, too?" Morgana asks, exasperated.

" _Fox_ couldn't get away from his sensei," Akira says. "I guess the painting he's been working on is finally done, so he can't keep saying he's meeting up with A--with Panther to work on it. And Panther's going to see Shiho in the hospital. I guess she woke up this morning and visiting hours only go to about six, so she wanted to head right there after school."

"What about Skull?" Futaba asks, pausing in her typing.

"He wanted to go up to the airsoft shop today anyway," Akira says. "To see if they'd buy the medal we got from the Palace. And I, uh... also didn't mention all this to him."

"Why not?" Yu asks.

"He just kind of has a habit of not trusting other people he meets in the metaverse," Akira says, sounding a little awkward about it. "He thought I was evil, he's still being weird and suspicious about Akechi--"

"No codename?" Yu asks, before he can stop himself.

(He does not miss the way Justine suddenly frowns when she hears the name, and looks down at the clipboard she's holding in sudden, intense concentration--even out of the corner of his eye, the change is obvious)

"He's not a Phantom Thief," Morgana says. "He doesn't have a codename."

"I think we could probably convince him to join, though, if we tried," Akira says. "Maybe? I'm not sure if we want to." He shakes his head. "Anyway, Yu, while we're waiting for Naoto and Rise--"

And then he launches into an explanation, aided (with increasing enthusiasm as the story goes on) by both Morgana and Futaba. About halfway through, right when the three of them are in the middle of describing the Shadow's giant tongue, Rise shows up. She stands next to Yu, carefully not touching any surface, and gives him a _what is this conversation I just walked into_ look.

"Hi, Rise," Akira says.

 _"Ohgodsheactuallyisanidol_ ," Futaba mumbles.

"What's this about a giant tongue trying to lick you?" Rise asks, sounding like she's not entirely convinced she wants to hear the answer.

"It wasn't _all_ of us," Akira says (as if this makes it better). "Just our friend Panther, because of how Kamoshida is a complete pervert. It's probably the grossest thing I've ever seen in a fight with a Shadow."

"I don't know," Yu says. "I remember hearing about a fight between two Persona-users where one of them hit the other one with a toilet--"

" _I was twelve_ ," Akira protests. "And I'm not letting you meet my friends anymore if you're going to tell them things like that."

Futaba is snickering behind her hand by this point, and Akira gives her a deeply offended look (which only makes her laugh harder) before going back to his retelling of yesterday's fight.

The rest of the story takes a little bit longer to get through, since the three Phantom Thieves keep having to backtrack to re-explain the parts Rise hadn't been there to hear the first time, but they finally finish, Futaba wrapping the story up with a less than dramatic, " _and then we got back to Leblanc and Sojiro made Joker wash dishes for staying out so late."_

"Which was totally unfair," Akira mutters. "Because you were out just as late as I was, and anyway it was only about 7:30."

"Which is pretty late for a shut-in," Morgana points out.

"Ex-shut-in," Akira says.

"Working-on-it-shut-in," Futaba says.

Yu takes advantage of this segue in the conversation to let his thoughts drift away somewhat. It's a little weird, isn't it, that Naoto's so late? They must have been sitting here talking for at least an hour by now.

Still, there's at least one more thing they'd wanted to do while they were here, and they can get that done while they wait. "So," he says, when the younger three have pretty much finished their bickering. "Scans?"

(It reminds him, a little, of watching Akira and Nanako whenever he went back to Inaba--after five years of living together, they'd bickered as much as any other siblings would, but never without the same thread of affection Yu can see here now)

(Poor Nanako, missing out on everything here--he's going to really have to work on getting Akira to call home)

"Scans," Futaba says, putting her computer away and standing up. "Right. I forgot about that."

-//-

_May 6_

_Afternoon_

_-//-_

Futaba has not, actually, forgotten that they're here to get a good scan of the lower levels of Mementos, and to look out for the super powerful sounding Reaper thing that had apparently caught Yu after his last meeting here with Akira.

She'd even been excited about the idea earlier, had _jumped_ at the chance to pick up some new data about this place, especially after Morgana had mentioned on the way home last night that he might know some things about it that he wanted to talk about at some point. But that had been before she knew there was going to be another navigator here, an _older_ and more _experienced_ navigator, one who (according to Akira) had already seen her share of potentially-world-ending fights, and had guided her friends out the other side.

(And, oh yea, happened to be an idol, which Futaba hadn't completely believed until the actual Risette showed up in Mementos)

(She's a still-working-on-it-shut-in, with a hacking hobby that not even Akira knows the full extend of yet--she's really going to have to tell him about Medjed someday soon--and almost no experience with Necronomicon)

"We should be able to get a lot more with two of us working on it than I could alone," Rise says, flashing Futaba a smile that makes Futaba want to hide a little bit.

"I don't know how much I can really help," she mumbles.

"Don't worry," Rise says. "I'm sure it'll go great." She steers Futaba away from the rest of the group, toward the escalators heading--Futaba can tell even without summoning her Persona--deeper into Mementos in a way that goes beyond just the fact that they're physically going _down_. There's something menacing about the darkness beyond them, something that makes even the uneven and red tinted light of the entrance level look friendly.

Next to her, Rise summons her Persona and Futaba fumbles to do the same. Necronomicon is a reassuring presence in her mind, and Futaba takes a deep breath and focuses on what she can sense through her Persona, instead of on the feeling of being outclassed by someone that can definitely do her job better than her.

There's Akira and Morgana, behind her, both of them familiar. Morgana... not feeling _quite_ the same as the rest of the Thieves, but not quite like anything else Futaba has run into since awakening her Persona, either. Akira is Akira, unmistakable for absolutely anyone else, the most powerful Persona-user she's met so far. His presence in her Persona-enhanced senses is the same as always, and somehow _also_ never the same twice. There's Akira, as distinct as a fingerprint, and the echo of Arsene within him, and then the chaos of his various other Persona, different every time they come to the metaverse.

Beside him is--that has to be Yu, because there's no one else here, but Futaba hadn't expected him to feel so similar to Akira. There's the same combination of Persona sharing space inside him, but where Akira's are jumbled and shifting, Yu's have a sense of being better organized within him.

(And he is _so much more powerful_ than Akira is. Like, two or three times as powerful, at _least_ )

There's Rise too, her Persona feeling a little bit like feedback when Futaba scopes her out through Necronomicon. She can feel Rise looking back at her at the same time, and it feels _weird_.

Beyond that, just the darkness, and the vague sense of depth and movement.

"Try to add your strength into mine, okay Futaba?" Rise asks. "I'm going to go for a deeper scan now."

Futaba has no idea what that means, but does not ask. She can _figure it out_.

And then a second later, she does. As Rise's Persona's attention shifts downward, she lets Necronomicon follow, and gasps at the sudden way her senses seem to shoot forward and outward.

(She regrets the gasp immediately, but it had seriously been a surprise. It's obvious Rise has had a lot more practice doing this than she has)

There's a floor below them--no, two--with Shadows that don't feel that much stronger than the ones in Kamoshida's Palace, and a kind of twisting, shifting feel to them that the castle hadn't had. These pathways would be different, wouldn't they, every time someone tried to go down into them?

"I couldn't sense any further than the second floor down when I came here alone," Rise says, while Futaba is still trying to figure out why the floors of Mementos would shift like that.

"Because of--what is that, a door?"

"I think so," Rise says. "But I think that maybe with both of us together, we can look down a little _farther_."

Futaba nods, and they _push_ , against the door--

For a split second she has a hint of a feeling of everything beyond it, of a depth, a _darkness_ , that is unlike anything she's felt so far, of the feeling of a worsening, directed malevolence the farther down she looks. It's like looking into a yawning, hungry portal, and realizing that _it_ is looking back at _her..._

She stumbles backward, Necronomicon vanishing as her concentration breaks, and feels Akira grab her shoulders to steady her.

"You okay?" he says. "Futaba?"

Next to them, she hears Rise throw up.

"...Oracle," she reminds him.

"Forget about that," Akira says. " _Are you okay_?"

"I'm fine," she says. " _Joker_."

He rolls his eyes at her, but at least seems reassured enough that he lets go of her. "If you say so, _Oracle_."

(...so she's proud of her codename, even now, while she reels from whatever she'd half-sensed beyond those doors. She's never been a part of something the way that codename makes her a part of the Phantom Thieves. It's reassuring, and she needs the reassurance)

"What did you _see_?" Morgana demands.

"It... was kind of hard to describe," Futaba says. She looks over at Rise, half-hoping for guidance, and sees Yu has moved over to her side. He's holding her hair back while she pukes again.

"You're not going to throw up too, are you?" Akira asks Futaba.

"No," Futaba says, although maybe it's a close thing. There's something... unsettling, farther down in Mementos. Even with only a glimpse, even though they'd only _really_ seen far enough down to know that there's a second door not too far beyond the first one, Futaba had felt...

She doesn't know what she had felt.

"It goes down really far," she says. "And it gets... worse, the farther down you go."

"Worse how?" Akira asks.

"Tougher Shadows," Rise says, before Futaba can get a word out. "And... it just feels..."

"Wrong," Futaba says.

"Too dangerous to go down into?" Yu asks.

Futaba shares a look with Rise, who has given up on her attempts to not touch anything here in Mementos, and is leaning against one of the veiny pillars. After what the two of them had just seen together, it's a little harder to think of Rise as the untouchable idol and herself as the lame, shut-in hacker girl.

(The fact that Rise had thrown up and Futaba had _not_ helps more than she wants to admit)

"Probably not too dangerous to go down into," Rise says at last. "I think if you went down one floor at a time, you could.... get used to it."

Futaba nods. "Like--how divers have to come up slowly," she says. "Or else they get the bends."

"Is that what happened to you two?" Akira asks.

"I think so?" Futaba says. "I think maybe we tried to look too far, too fast."

"How far, exactly?" Morgana asks, sounding strangely urgent. "Could you see to the bottom?"

"No," Futaba says.

"I think I could," Rise says. "A little. Just for a second."

"And?" Morgana demands. "What did it look like?"

"It was just a flash," Rise says. "But I think I saw something blue. A butterfly."

It's not Morgana that reacts to this, but Akira. His eyes go wide and he takes a step forward before forcibly stopping himself. "A butterfly?" he repeats. "Like--"

"Like the app," Rise says.

"What app?" Futaba asks.

"This one," Rise says. "You know."

"The metanav," Yu provides.

There's a beat or two of silence, and then Akira says, "The metanav doesn't have a butterfly on it."

"Yes it does," Yu says, and pulls out his phone. He scrolls through his phone, then holds it up to show the metanav's app icon.

It _is_ a butterfly, Futaba sees. A blue butterfly.

She reaches for her own phone, and pulls up her version of the app, with its angry red eye.

Without either of them saying a word, Rise and Akira add their phones to the display--Rise, another butterfly, and Akira the eye.

"I wonder if that means anything," Futaba says, squinting at the two apps. "Do you think I could borrow one of your phones? I couldn't get anything out of our version when I tried looking at the code--" Because it doesn't _have any code_ , "But maybe yours will have something I can get into?"

"You can borrow mine for a day or two, if you think it'll help," Yu says, and actually hands it over to her.

"I--thanks." She's surprised at the ease that he trusts her with it, but maybe she shouldn't be after everything she's heard about him from Akira.

"No problem. The passcode's--"

"I can get in without it," Futaba says, waving him off. "It's just a cell phone, it's not like it'd be _hard_ to hack into."

Yu gives her a slightly concerned look, but doesn't comment.

"Are you okay, Akira?" Rise asks, and since Rise had been the one being violently sick five minutes ago, this seems to Futaba like a slightly strange question. But she looks over at Akira, and sure enough he has gone as pale as an actual ghost.

"I'm--the butterfly, it's..." He takes a deep breath. " _Lavenza_."

This means nothing to Futaba, and Rise still seems confused, but Morgana's ears twitch and Yu makes a strangled noise of surprise.

"I didn't even _realize_ ," he says. "I should have put the pieces together when I saw--and you said she's...?"

"Missing," Akira says. "Hurt, I don't know."

Who, Futaba wonders, is Lavenza? Akira's told her a lot about his previous... adventures in the metaverse, but this is not a name he's mentioned to her before.

He's looking down, toward Mementos, with an expression on his face that Futaba does not know how to interpret.

"If there's _any_ chance she's connected to Mementos," he says. "Then we need to get there."

"I agree," Morgana says. "I don't know anything about your friend, Joker, but I think my memories are tied to whatever's at the bottom of Mementos, too. So if you need someone to help you get there--count me in."

Akira flashes him a grateful smile.

"Hang on a second," Futaba says. "Why do you think it's _just_ going to be Mona helping you? The rest of us are going to be right there with you."

She doesn't know what's going on, but it's very obviously important to Akira.

If he thinks the Phantom Thieves aren't going to be there with him--

(She knows this, without even talking to the rest of them, without any of them even being there with them)

\--If he thinks the Phantom Thieves aren't going to be there to help him, then he is _wrong_.

Behind them, someone clears their throat, and the whole group of them that's huddled around the escalators turns to see someone Futaba only recognizes because she'd looked her up online after Akira once mentioned her name.

"Did I miss something?" Naoto Shirogane asks.

-//-

_May 6_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Akira knows, the second he turns and sees the expression on Naoto's face, that they're about to get more bad news. Pushing worry about Lavenza aside for the moment (because he can't even process it right now, he doesn't know what to _think,_ much less _do_ ), he refocuses on Naoto.

"Did something happen?" Yu asks her. His tone is guarded and wary, clearly expecting bad news as much as Akira is.

"Yes," Naoto says. She eyes the group, looks like she's considering whether she should ask what she's missed, and then doesn't. "I... something has been happening over the past few days. And I think it's gotten to the point where I wanted to warn you and Akira about it."

"Warn?" Akira echoes.

"Yes," Naoto says. "And I'm not sure exactly where to start explaining..."

"The beginning?" Morgana suggests.

Naoto looks at him, then does the usual double take when she sees him.

"Right," Akira says. "Naoto, this is Mona, Mona, this is Naoto. Mona isn't a cat, even though he looks like one. And this is Oracle."

"Human," Futaba says, raising her hand.

"Alright," Naoto says uncertainly. She clears her throat again. "But your friend has a point, the beginning is a good place to start. Most of you know that I've been working with various police agencies ever since I was in high school."

Akira nods, and of course Yu and Rise already know about this too. Futaba doesn't look _too_ surprised (Akira's pretty sure she'd looked up most of the members of the Investigation Team after he told her about them), but Morgana looks deeply unhappy.

"We're seriously okay with a cop being down here?" he mutters, quietly enough so that only Akira can hear him.

"She's not a cop, actually," Akira says. "She's a detective who works _with_ the police."

Naoto either doesn't notice this side conversation, or chooses to ignore it as she continues. "Over the past few days," she says. "I have been contacted by most of the agencies I have ever worked with, and told that they were no longer interested in my assistance."

"But--"

"This _has_ happened in the past," Naoto says, ignoring Yu's attempt to interrupt. There's something about the look on her face, the expression that's half a grimace and half disgust, as if she doesn't want the words to touch her as they come out of her mouth. "Occasionally an agency or a particular precinct will decide that they don't want private assistance, or sometimes the regulations will change and limit their ability to contract consulting detectives from outside the department."

"But?" Akira prompts.

"But I've never had it happen on a scale like this before," Naoto says. "I've spent years building up these contacts, and in less than a week, I've lost all of them. Suddenly, no one wants to work with me. This job has been my dream--" Her expression turns angry. "It's been my _purpose_ for years, now. But if no one will work with me, then all of that is--gone."

"But," Yu says. "How? I mean... I don't understand."

"I had a meeting today," Naoto says. "That makes me think this is deliberate, and that it's being done because of something I've been looking into that I shouldn't have been." Her face is set, and grimmer than Akira is used to seeing it. "Or, to be more accurate, something that I was looking into that needed very much to be investigated."

"And someone's trying to scare you away from it?" Yu asks.

They don't know Naoto at all, if that's the case, Akira thinks.

"That's my assumption," she agrees. "Yes."

Yu frowns. "When you texted me earlier, you said that you thought it had something to do with Akira," he says.

"Because I'm only officially working on three cases right now," Naoto says. "Two are nearly wrapped up, and the perpetrator's identities have already been handed over to the police. Removing me from the equation at this point wouldn't benefit them in any way now. The third case is in an earlier stage, but I'm working with several other people, none of whom have been targeted in a similar way."

"But," Yu prompts. "Akira?"

"The only other thing I have been involved in for the past two months or so," Nanako says. "In _any_ capacity, is all this. I've been giving it some thought, and my best working theory is that someone noticed when I started asking questions about Akira in April."

"Me?" Akira says.

"Yu asked me to help track you down," Naoto says. "As you know. I assumed that doing some research into a probation case wouldn't be something that raised any red flags, so I wasn't as careful as I could have been. I talked to a few people, and did some searches in the police records."

"His record's completely classified in the police system," Futaba volunteers. "I looked him up when he first got here, and all it has is his name and the dates of his arrest and sentencing. Everything else is classified and encrypted, and even when you get through that, there's still information missing. They don't even have the name of the guy he assaulted--"

"I didn't assault anyone," Akira objects.

"Allegedly assaulted," Futaba says.

Naoto gives Futaba a look. "How do you have access to...? Never mind. The point is that you're right. You _can't_ get any information about his arrest or probation through the police system, which is why I started asking questions in the first place. Since I've ruled out my official assignments as possibly having anything to do with what's happening now, this is the only thing left."

"But that doesn't make any sense," Akira protests.

"It does if someone knows about _this_ ," Naoto says, gesturing around them to the rest of Mementos. "It makes sense if word that I was investigating you got back to someone that somehow knows you have access to this place."

"But..." He trails off. It kind of makes sense, but it also kind of doesn't. On the one side, if Naoto had been investigating _him_ , then anyone that knows about his access to the metaverse might have an interest in forcing Naoto away from him before she learned too much (assuming that this person did not _also_ know that Naoto has her own Persona and had been in Inaba during everything that had happened there). But on the other hand, that would mean that someone on the police force knows about--

It hits him immediately.

"Akechi," he says. "He saw us in Kamoshida's Palace."

The detective they'd stumbled into in the metaverse, less than a week ago. The sudden pressure on Naoto that had started _less than a week ago_. It's crazy to think that someone only a little older than him would be able to do this to Naoto, but Akira can't see what else could have happened, or who else might possibly know.

-//-

(and elsewhere in Tokyo, never thinking that he'd be figured out so easily--)

( _Because he has always been alone, because the idea of Naoto and Akira talking to each other, comparing notes, being_ honest _with each other, has simply never occurred to him)_

(--elsewhere in Tokyo, Akechi is comfortable in the knowledge that Naoto will soon be gone from the city, she'll be far away from the Metaverse, and his plans for the metaverse can continue on, without any more surprises)

(He has no idea how wrong he is)

-//-

Akira can hear his own breathing loud in his ears as he stands in the middle of Mementos, mind racing, trying to figure out how absolutely screwed he is. Everyone else--Yu, Naoto, Rise, Futaba, Morgana, even _Justine_ back in her corner by the Velvet Room door--is looking at him, waiting to see what he's going to say.

"Akechi," Akira says. 

There's a flicker of something unexpected on Justine's face as he says this, a smile quickly hidden. She's wiped it away by the time Akira looks at her again.

(Somewhere in the back of his mind, he makes a mental note to talk to her and her sister about today's _other_ big revelation, the butterfly vision Rise had seen at the bottom of Mementos)

"Goro Akechi," Naoto says. "That is who you're talking about, yes?"

"Yea," Akira says. "We ran into him in Kamoshida's Palace. Apparently he's had access to the metaverse for a couple of years, and he's been using it to help with his investigations. I thought--" Stupid. "I thought he wasn't going to say anything about seeing us, though."

He'd _wanted_ to trust Akechi though, even if he hadn't liked him all that much, because after everything that had happened with Ann and Ryuji just a couple days before, he hadn't wanted to be the one jumping to conclusions that any random person they happened to meet in the metaverse is evil.

Okay, evil is probably kind of a stretch. It's not like he's Black Mask, or anything--just a detective that had done exactly what Akira should have _expected_ a detective to do in this situation. He'd gone to the police. And what had he said? 

"I'm surprised to hear he has access to the metaverse," Naoto says. "But he _was_ the one to find you."

"Seriously?" Akira says.

"Very quickly, actually," Naoto muses, and she sounds suddenly troubled by this.

"Hang on," Morgana says. "If Akechi sold us out, why aren't _we_ the ones getting in trouble with the police?"

"Good question," Akira says. He just doesn't have a good answer, no matter how much he wishes he did. "We don't know what he's trying to do or why he's doing it or anything. Maybe he really is worried about us saying that we saw him in the metaverse if he comes after us. Naoto doesn't--didn't--know about him, so maybe he thought it was safer. Or maybe he just doesn't have a good plan for dealing with us. Yet."

"It might be impossible to guess why he's doing this without knowing more about him and his motives," Naoto says. "Which means we need to investigate."

"You mean we're getting the Investigation Team back together?" Rise asks, perking up.

"No," Yu says, and he looks at Akira, who understands the meaning behind it immediately. This isn't Inaba. The Velvet Room isn't open to Yu. This is Tokyo, and this-- _whatever_ this is--should be handled by the Phantom Thieves.

Except that it shouldn't, in Akira's opinion, because he wants to know what's going on with Akechi, he wants to know as soon as possible, and he wants the help of every single person here. He wants Naoto to talk to any contacts she has, and Futaba looking up whatever she can online. 

"We should all look into it," he says. "If you guys are willing to help."

"Yea!" Rise says. "Of course."

"You're sure?" Yu asks.

He's not exactly sure how to handle it, no. But... he thinks this is the right choice. "Akechi wants Naoto out, for some reason that probably has to do with me." He frowns. "That means he brought the Investigation Team _and_ the Phantom Thieves into this."

"Alright," Yu says, with a small smile that makes Akira think he's happier than he'll ever admit to be involved. "Then consider the Investigation Team officially in."

"Thank you," Akira says.

Naoto's expression is thoughtful as she says, "I may actually be able to find out more if he thinks he's been successful at driving me away from Tokyo. I have... an idea of where I could go, and that would certainly encourage him to let his guard down."

Akira feels a sudden stab of guilt. She's leaving Tokyo because Akechi had ruined her prospects here. Akechi had done that because of _him_. "Are you sure?"

"Positive," she says.

"Okay," he says. "Well--okay, then."

"I can do some digging online," Futaba says, which Akira interprets to mean that she will know everything about Akechi that is in any kind of online database.

"Good," Akira says. "Perfect. Meanwhile..." he hesitates, then says, "I'm going to make friends with him."

"Wow," Morgana says, after a brief silence. "That seems--"

"We're not going to get anywhere with figuring out his motives until we actually get to know him," Akira says. "And this seems like the fastest way to do that. If he wants to do something like what he did to Naoto to anyone else that's related to me, then I want to find out about it."

"Sounds like trouble," Yu says, sounding proud.

"Yea," Akira says. "Well--maybe I'm tired of acting like trouble is something I can just keep my head down and avoid." He frowns. "I tried that, when I first got here. After I got arrested, I thought that I could just avoid everyone from back home, and they'd be fine, and that was a mistake." Because obviously that isn't going to work, because he'd tried to avoid everyone he cares about, and Yu and Naoto had tracked him down anyway. He'd tried to push them away, and _it had not helped_.

The only thing that feels like it's actually worked out for him are the Phantom Thieves and Kamoshida's Palace. The only thing that's really gone well is _making as much trouble as he possibly can._

So he's not going to be afraid of what's going to happen to the people he cares about anymore. He's not going to try and hide from them like that's somehow going to keep them safe.

"It didn't work," he says. "So maybe it's time to just... embrace that, and start making trouble."

"Wow," Morgana says. "I really don't think Akechi knows what he's getting himself into."

"Oh he has _no_ idea," Yu says with a little grin, and Akira has the sudden sense that Yu can read _exactly_ what he's thinking, even with the mask.

They split up not long after that, after agreeing to keep each other in the loop on anything they learn about Akechi. Futaba arranges a place and time to meet Yu to return his phone after she's done digging into it, and they start filtering out of Mementos, one or two at a time so they won't attract too much attention.

Yu puts his hand on Akira's shoulder for a second when it's just the two of them, Morgana, and Futaba left. "I liked what you said."

"About making trouble?" Akira says. 

"Well," Yu says. "That too. It's honestly--it's what you do, Trickster."

Akira cracks a smile. So does Yu, but just for a second.

"But actually," he says. "What I meant was--I liked what you said about how cutting yourself off from the people you care about isn't working."

Akira flushes a little. "Yu," he says, lowering his voice a little. "Do you think Dojima would be okay with it if I just... Called him? After all this time?"

Yu fixes him with a look. "Obviously," he says. "He's been asking about you, you know."

Akira's stomach flips over with a sudden wave of guilt. "I'll call him tonight."

He'll fix what he's messed up with his family. Then he'll figure out what's going on with Akechi, make sure he doesn't hurt anyone else that Akira cares about. And after that...

After that, there's Palaces, and the Thieves, and _Mementos_ , with Lavenza maybe waiting at the bottom.

This year is shaping up to look like an awful lot of trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter... got away from me a little bit? >.< I feel like it's very busy and very long and I HOPE it is still readable.
> 
> Honestly, it's all Akechi's fault. I finally figured out how I want to handle him in this verse, and that basically boils down to 'in way more over his head than he thinks he is, and handling it very badly' :p


	12. May 6 - May 14

_May 6_

_Evening_

-//-

Over the past few days, ever since Sojiro had caught her and Akira walking home together, Futaba has started eating dinner most nights with the two of them and Morgana at Leblanc. It's the first time she's really made a habit of eating with other people since...

Since she doesn't know when, actually. Since sometime before her mom died, definitely. But right before her mom's death, she'd been so busy that it seemed like they'd never had time to eat together, and they'd both had a tendency to get wrapped up in their own projects, so... so dinners together had never been all that regular of a thing.

Turns out, it's kind of nice.

Even today, after everything that had happened in Mementos--after meeting Akira's old friends from back home, and the things she and Rise had been able to see with their Persona together, and the discovery that Akechi is a _lot_ more suspicious than they'd thought, and Akira deciding to make (somehow) _even more trouble than he already has_ \--

Even after all that, dinner together is nice. Futaba had half expected that she'd be too tired to sit here and eat with everyone else, because sometimes just being around other people is draining, but it's not bad. Being around these people, specifically, is not bad. The TV drones in the background, Morgana keeps up a constant stream of complaints about his cat food that only two of the three of them understand, and it feels like--

Family.

"Isn't that your school they've been talking about on the news all day?" Sojiro asks, as they're finishing up the curry.

"What?" Akira looks up at the TV, which is showing a picture of Shujin, next to an old promotional shot from when Kamoshida had competed in the Olympics. "Oh, yea."

"Did you know that guy?"

Futaba watches Akira's expression, but it's impassive as he considers how to answer. Finally, he shrugs. "Kind of. He spread some rumors around about me when school first started, but he got bored of me pretty fast."

Futaba takes a bite of curry to hide her smirk. 

"Sounds like he's confessed to doing some pretty terrible things," Sojiro says.

Akira nods, and his impassive expression is starting to slip into something sad. Futaba wonders if he's thinking about his friend that had jumped off the roof, and decides to try and get some of Sojiro's attention away from him. "See?" she says to Sojiro. " _This_ is why I don't want to go to an actual high school."

It's an old argument, and Futaba is pretty sure Sojiro will rise to the bait.

Sure enough: "You know this kind of thing doesn't happen at every school," Sojiro tells her. 

"But it _might_ happen," Futaba says.

"Or you might make friends," Sojiro points out.

Futaba shrugs. "I have enough friends already," she tells him. This is her normal response when they have this argument, but--for the first time--she actually means it. 

The argument continues going around in circles, until dinner wraps up and they start doing the usual cleaning. Akira goes to wash the dishes without being told, and Sojiro tells Futaba to start wiping things down while he takes out the trash.

Morgana hops up on the counter to supervise.

"Do you want to help?" Futaba asks him.

He looks at her with an expression of _I have no thumbs,_ and--with as much dignity as he can muster up, starts cleaning his face.

(She is getting much too good at reading his expression)

"Akira," Futaba announces. "Your cat isn't helping with clean up."

"Why is he suddenly _my_ cat?" Akira asks. 

"I'm not a cat at all!"

"Whose cat is he if he's not yours?" Futaba asks. She knows that it annoys Morgana when anyone calls him a cat, but--well, it's not much of a defense, but it's kind of fun to tease him.

"I keep telling you," Morgana huffs. "I am _not_ a cat."

"I think he's more of a family cat," Akira says thoughtfully, and although his voice sounds casual, there's a grin on his face and his eyes are laughing.

"You guys are mean," Morgana mutters.

"Sure, but he's _your_ cat when he's misbehaving," Futaba says, which nets her a long suffering look.

"Sorry, Morgana," Akira says when he glances back over his shoulder and catches the expression.

"Yea," Futaba says. "Sorry."

Morgana points his nose upward for a second, just long enough probably to make them feel suitably guilty, and then deigns to nod. "But I really am human, you know," he says.

"We know," Futaba tells him, because maybe he is and maybe he isn't--it wouldn't really even be the weirdest twist this year has taken so far--but he's human enough to talk to them, fight Shadows with them, and be a friend. If he says he's human, then--well, he'd know better than anyone, wouldn't he?

"Your phone's ringing," Morgana tells her, interrupting Futaba's chain of thoughts.

"What?" She usually keeps her phone set to silent, but there it is, sitting in front of the stool where she'd been sitting and eating dinner, buzzing slightly. She must have accidentally put it on vibrate. "Thanks, Mona!"

She puts down her cloth and reaches for the phone. The only people that have her phone number are the Phantom Thieves and Sojiro, so she doesn't bother to check if it's someone she wants to talk to before picking up and saying, "Hello?"

"Y--who's this?" an unfamiliar voice asks.

Futaba freezes. She's getting better, she thinks, at being able to meet new people. But this had caught her by surprise, and all she can do is open and close her mouth in surprise. Then the thought comes to actually _look_ at the phone and see who it is, at which point she realizes that she's not holding her phone.

She's holding Yu's phone, which he had loaned to her so that she can pick apart his version of the metanav and see if there's anything there to help them. The name on the caller ID is _Ryotaro Dojima._

_-//-_

_May 6_

_Evening_

-//-

Dojima has taken to calling his nephew at least once a week since Akira was shipped off to Tokyo. It's been more than a month since Akira's arrest, and Dojima knows for an absolute fact that this is more than enough time for him to get into trouble.

A _normal_ sixteen year old could get into trouble all on their own in Tokyo. Akira is not a normal teenager.

And so the calls continue. He feels... better now, in a way, having heard that at least Yu has been in contact with Akira. The fact that Akira is still refusing to talk to him directly makes Dojima half wants to drive out to Tokyo himself to shake some sense into the kid, but he holds himself back. It's only going to make Arkia dig his heels in more.

So on this particular Friday, after he and Nanako have finished their dinner and done the minimal amount of clean up that's required from takeout food, he gives Yu a call.

An unfamiliar girl's voice answers.

"Y--" He blinks, taken aback. "Who is this?"

There's a long pause, then the sound of the girl's voice (louder, but also more distant, as if she's pulled the phone away from her face but also started shouting). " _Akira!_ "

This is loud enough for Nanako to hear on the other side of the table, and she whips her head around to look at him with her eyes suddenly sparking with interest.

"Dad--"

"Shh," he says quickly, because he's trying very hard to make out anything he can from the other end of the line. 

" _Akira, I accidentally answered Yu's phone!"_ the girl says.

There's a second voice, not shouting and also obviously farther from the phone, which Dojima recognizes instantly regardless.

_"...st hang up, maybe?"_

He puts his phone on speaker for a better chance of actually being able to hear Akira, and Nanako immediately leans over the table so she can hear better as well.

" _What if it's someone that needs to talk to him?"_ the girl asks.

 _"Then they can talk to him after you give him his phone back,"_ Akira says, and Dojima very badly wants to know what sequence of events has led to Akira and this unknown girl taking Yu's phone. _"Who is it, anyway?"_

_"Look--"_

She must be holding the phone out for him to see, because there's a a sudden flurry of cursing from Akira (Dojima frowns) and the sound of something being knocked over.

" _Morgana!_ " he calls. _"Can you distract Sojiro for a while? He's going to be back from taking the trash out in a minute, otherwise."_

There's a long string of panicked meowing from the other side of the call, which is enough for their cat (Shadow, the one that Nanako had 'given' Akira as a birthday present three years ago, primarily because she wanted a cat herself) to hop up onto the table and paw at the phone in interest. Dojima gestures to Nanako, who pulls the cat onto her lap and holds her there.

 _"I'll help,"_ says the girl. _"You want the phone, Akira?"_

_"Yea, here--"_

A quick sequence of sounds. The phone moving from one hand to another, the opening of a door, and then the girl shouting (very far from the phone now), " _Sojiro, Morgana got out, we have to catch him--"_ and then footsteps thundering up what sounds like a set of stairs. Then at the top, slightly breathless, Akira says into the phone--

"Hi."

"That's all you have to say, after two months?" Nanako demands, before Dojima can get a single word out. " _You didn't even say goodbye and then after two months all you say is hi?_ "

"Nanako," Akira says.

 _"Akira!"_ she almost shouts.

"...I was going to say more," Akira says, after a lengthy pause. 

"Like what?" Nanako asks.

"Like--" he hesitates, and then says, "Like how sorry I am that it's been two months. I was actually going to call tonight, but uh--I guess this works too. I'm really sorry."

Dojima lets out a sigh. He has no idea what Akira's been through since his arrest. Yes, he's managed to learn some of the facts recently from Yu, both those are only facts. Akira has lived here, in this house, since he was eleven years old. Dojima knows him. He wants to hear the story from Akira's own mouth, so he can see how he's feeling, how he's coping.

"You're done ignoring us now," Dojima says. "Right?"

"Yea," Akira says. "A lot of stuff's been happening--"

And Dojima bites back a sigh because this is Akira, so _of course_ a lot of stuff has been happening.

"But it kind of made me realize that--I've been stupid to ignore you guys just because those are the terms of my probation."

Normally, he would have said that probationary guidelines are set for a reason, and that they are meant to be followed--

But in this case, partially because the terms of Akira's probation had been set so arbitrarily and unfairly, and partially because he genuinely worries for Akira's mental health when he's _not_ breaking rules, that doesn't seem to apply.

"So you'll be calling home from now on?" Dojima asks.

"I promise," Akira says. 

"Good," Dojima says. "Then maybe you can tell me why you and your friend have Yu's phone."

"Uh--I could, but it's kind of a long story and I don't know how long Futaba and Morgana can distract Sojiro. That's, uh--Sojiro's my guardian for the year--"

And Dojima pretends that those words do _not_ send a sudden edge of jealousy through him. 

"Futaba's his daughter, and Morgana's, um... a talking cat we met fighting Shadows."

"He's a _talking_ cat?" Nanako asks, eyes lighting off with sheer enthusiasm.

"Kind of talking," Akira says. "Most people can't understand him because they haven't been in the metaverse--that's kind of like the TV World, but it also includes other things we've run into here--but if you _have_ , you can understand him. Otherwise it just sounds like meowing."

"I guess that's why Shadow was so excited," Nanako says, giving the cat a scratch behind the ears.

"Oh yea," Akira says. "How's Shadow doing?"

"She keeps going up to your bedroom and meowing," Nanako says. "I think she misses you as much as we do. Almost."

There's a long silence on the other end, and then Dojima's phone buzzes and a new icon pops up on the screen. "What's that?" he asks Nanako.

" _Dad_." She rolls her eyes and reaches over the table to press it. "It's to switch over to a video call."

It takes about ten or fifteen seconds to connect and load, and then Akira's face pops onto the screen. Grainy and small, it's still enough to show that Akira is in one piece. 

"Akira!" Nanako cries, and it's like the anger that had briefly flared earlier has evaporated completely. Akira might as well have been gone for two hours rather than two months, with the way they suddenly start chattering away at each other. Dojima stays quiet for the most part, listening to the conversation and picking up whatever he can from what Akira lets slip about himself and his life in Tokyo.

He's been getting into trouble, which isn't a surprise. Doing _okay_ at school, it sounds like, but Dojima's going to hold his opinions on that until he hears how Akira's first round of exam scores turn out. And Akira mentions friends--good. Yusuke's one of them, which Dojima gives a nod of approval to. Yusuke can be a little... artistic, sometimes, but he and Akira have been friends for years. Dojima already knows that they have the kind of loyalty that not even a life or death situation can shake.

He'd never imagined that would be the kind of thing he'd have to worry about with his kids. He should have been worrying about Akira taking college entrance exams next year, and Nanako getting ready for middle school. Whether they're relatively happy, well fed and with a roof over their heads.

Instead, for the past five years, he's had to worry about how they're going to handle themselves when--not if, but _when_ \--they run face first into the kinds of dangers that he will never be able to protect them from. About making sure they'll be able to take care of themselves, that they're surrounded by people they can trust, that Akira's habit of causing (constant, but generally well meaning) trouble is... _carefully_ indulged. Not to the extent that he gets away with whatever he wants, but enough so that the skill can develop.

(Years ago, before he moved away from Inaba, Yu had come to Dojima and had a conversation with him about... well, about things that Dojima doesn't fully understand, and which Yu had seemed slightly uncomfortable about having to explain out loud. About an old man with a long nose in a strange, blue room. About contracts and bonds, and how something is going to come for Akira, one day)

(He hadn't said anything about Nanako, but Dojima has never actually believed that he could keep his daughter away from whatever trouble she'll willingly follow Akira into)

"Are you listening, Dad?" Nanako asks.

"Hmm?" He _has_ gotten a little wrapped up in his own thoughts. "Of course I'm listening," he tells Nanako.

"You spaced out a little," Akira says with a smirk.

" _Akira_."

The smirk stops--the smile that it fades into, stays. "Sorry."

Dojima takes a deep breath. "Well," he says. "It sounds like you're doing okay with settling in."

"I'm getting there," Akira says.

"Hmm." Dojima considers him through the phone. "You need a haircut."

"Wha--my hair's fine!"

"I can hardly see your face."

"That's on purpose!"

There's the sound of running footsteps from Akira's side of the call, and then someone hisses, " _Akira!_ " in the tone that people use when they're trying to whisper and still be loud at the same time. 

Akira moves the phone's screen so that a girl--maybe a year or two younger than Akira--comes into frame. She's holding a black cat, who jumps out of her arms and onto a shelf behind Akira. 

"This is Futaba and Morgana," Akira says, in the voice of someone that has had to do a lot of introductions lately. "And this is Dojima and Nanako."

"Um--" Futaba says, looking abruptly nervous. "Hi. Akira, me and Sojiro _found--_ " She's using air quotes. "Morgana, because he's apparently very bad at hiding--"

The cat yowls loudly (and for a split second it seems like there's... _something_ behind it, but Dojima can't quite force his mind to focus on it), and Nanako gasps. " _He really does talk!"_ she says, voice barely above a whisper, which no one but Dojima seems to hear.

"And now he's coming back to lecture you about taking better care of him because I said you left the door open," Futaba finishes. "So you might want to get off the phone."

"Wow," Akira says. "Thanks."

"You are welcome," says Futaba, giving him a grin that makes Dojima understand instantly how they'd gotten to be friends.

"So I guess I should say goodbye for now," Akira says quickly, turning back to the phone. But I'll call later."

"Take care of yourself," Dojima says. "Try to either stay out of trouble, or not get caught."

"Bye!" Nanako calls.

There's a beat. "Miss you guys," Akira says, and then he hangs up.

-//-

"They seem nice," Futaba says, as Akira tosses her Yu's phone.

"They're great," Akira says.

" _Akira!_ " Sojiro shouts from downstairs.

"Lot of people yelling my name today," Akira mutters. "Anyway, you'll let me know when you're done looking into that version of the metanav?"

"Will do," Futaba says. "Have fun being lectured on responsible pet ownership."

He makes a face at her and goes downstairs.

-//-

_May 11_

_Afternoon_

-//-

The Phantom Thieves lay low over the next few days, more or less.

There are no visits to Palaces, no trips to Mementos, nothing that might attract attention. Futaba spends most of that time in her room, splitting her attention between researching Goro Akechi (surprisingly difficult, since most of his records beyond public appearances are _way_ more classified than they should be), the version of the metanav on Yu's phone, and monitoring the 'phan site' that one of Akira's classmates had set up. It's... kind of cool, actually, that they'd made enough of an impact for someone to start up a _fan site_ for them.

The problem is that it's a completely insecure website, and if anyone decides to start looking into it, they'd have a really easy time tracking the site to Yuuki Mishima, and since he's in the same class as two of the Phantom Thieves, that's probably dangerous. So Futaba amuses herself for a couple of days by hacking the site, locking Mishima out of his admin privileges, and otherwise being a hassle, before eventually sending some emails from Alibaba and helping him to get everything better secured.

As for the app, that's a dead end. The functionality is identical to the one the Phantom Thieves have, and just like the eye version Futaba has already looked at, the butterfly app is not really an app at all. It... exists, on Yu's phone, but without having any developer information or accessible code.

She hadn't really expected any answers, so she isn't surprised not to get them. Disappointed, maybe. Not surprised. 

(She wonders which version of the app Akechi has)

It's frustrating not to have anything new to be able to tell the others, but at least Futaba does end up getting _something_ out of Yu's borrowed phone. It's not anything that's going to help the team, but Futaba enjoys being nosy, sometimes. She's not going to pretend that she tries very hard to resist the urge to read his messages when they come in. It's just not the kind of person she is. There are texts from his friends (he has a lot of them apparently--they mostly seem nice), and some from his parents (they seem... not so nice). 

And she... feels bad about it, but she also looks up the message thread between Yu and Akira from back when he'd still had his old phone number, and scrolls back to the beginning, _beyond_ curious for a glimpse of what a younger Akira had been like. Yu is apparently one of those people that imports all his old messages and pictures whenever he gets a new phone (which is a horrible waste of phone storage, but at least it's helping Futaba now), so there actually _are_ old messages from 2011, when Akira had been twelve.

> **Akira**
> 
> Test
> 
> It's working
> 
> So how long are you grounded for?
> 
> Two weeks :(
> 
> I mean you did disappear with your new friend until 2 in the morning
> 
> Yea, and me and Yusuke are both fine!
> 
> But you MIGHT have gotten hurt
> 
> Akira, seriously, you need to try harder to stay out of trouble

Futaba, who has by now heard the story of how Yusuke got his Persona after Akira accidentally pushed him into a TV and got them both stuck in there for so long they practically had a search party sent out after them, snorts a laugh. She can imagine how excited Akira must have been when he sent these texts, probably already planning to find some Shadows in the metaverse. She moves to scroll further through the texts, when the phone buzzes with a new message.

> **Nanako**
> 
> Hi! Is this still Akira, or is it Yu and you got your phone back? :)

Nanako, Futaba remembers, is the name of Akira's... well, she's basically his sister, even if he's careful to never use the word. She'd been the girl on the video call a few days ago. 

Futaba's not sure what makes her answer, exactly, except that anyone Akira thinks of as part of his family is someone she's curious about. 

(That, and--this is an eleven year old. She can have this conversation, right?)

> **Nanako**
> 
> Actually this is Futaba
> 
> We kind of met the other day
> 
> Oh yea!
> 
> Well, it's nice to meet you for real :)
> 
> Kind of for real. You know
> 
> Yea, I know
> 
> Nice to meet you too
> 
> So did you need one of them for something, or...?
> 
> It's nothing important. I just
> 
> Needed someone to talk to one of them about something
> 
> I'm actually meeting with Yu tomorrow to give him his phone back
> 
> Or I can send you Akira's new number now
> 
> That would be great, thanks :)
> 
> No problem. He has exams the next three days though, so he might not answer
> 
> _[attachment: contact information Akira Kurusu]_
> 
> Thank you!

There's a long pause, and Futaba thinks that's going to be the end of it. Nanako had been trying to get hold of Yu and Akira, not her. But after about fifteen minutes, the phone buzzes again.

> **Nanako**
> 
> Do you mind if I ask why you have Yu's phone in the first place?

Futaba hesitates a second or two, but--well, why not? According to what Akira and Yusuke have told her about fighting Shadows in Inaba, Nanako had known absolutely everything about it. Not just what they did, but everything about the Shadows--strengths, weaknesses, tactics, _everything_. She'd basically had Futaba's navigation role without actually having a Persona, and Futaba can respect that.

> **Nanako**
> 
> There's this app we're using to get into the metaverse, and for some reason Yu has a different version
> 
> I was trying to get at the code, but it doesn't have any code, so... no luck
> 
> So what's so different about his version then?
> 
> Mostly just the app icon, turns out. Ours is this angry red eye, and Yu's is this blue butterfly
> 
> _[attachment: screenshot of metanav app icon]_
> 
> Oh!It looks like 
> 
> Never mind

Futaba takes a guess. She remembers the name Akira had blurted out in Mementos. She's asked him about it a couple of times since then, but so far he's always managed to come up with a distraction or an excuse to change the subject. And she really, really wants to know more.

> **Nanako**
> 
> Like Lavenza?
> 
> Yea, exactly
> 
> Akira's mentioned her

Exactly _once._

> **Nanako**
> 
> But I really don't know that much about her
> 
> I think I have a picture of her, if you want to see it?
> 
> Sure
> 
> I scanned a bunch of our old TV World stuff last year, all the Shadow records and pictures and things

It takes a few minutes, but eventually the pictures--not just one, but a pair of them--come through. Futaba scrolls through them.

The first is a group of picture, of a much younger Akira and Yusuke with a tiny girl that looks a lot like Nanako had on that video call, and a second girl with long blonde hair wearing a blue dress. Her hairclip does, actually, look exactly like the icon on Yu's metanav. The four of them are in front of what looks like a backyard garden, pressed together against a backdrop of vegetables, and Akira's arm is stretched out to hold the camera or phone or whatever up to take the picture. Yusuke's eyes are closed, mid-blink, Akira's expression is frozen in laughter, Nanako's grinning so widely that Futaba can see where she's missing a baby tooth. Lavenza's expression is the only one that looks at all composed, but when Futaba looks again, she sees the way her eyes are _dancing._ She's just as happy to be there as the rest of them, even if she's hiding it.

The second picture is--different. Just Akira and Lavenza, with no one else around. The two of them are sitting on a sidewalk somewhere, in front of a strip mall or a row of shops, something like that. They're just sitting there, looking at each other and talking. 

Futaba looks at the expression on small Akira's face for a very long time, and she's not that good with people, but she looks at the way Akira looks at Lavenza, and there's _something_ there.

> **Nanako**
> 
> The first one is from after those three saved a guy in Akira's class from the TV World
> 
> I think Yu took the second one right before the end of the school year
> 
> Lavenza left after that, I never really found out why
> 
> That seems kind of weird?
> 
> I don't know. I was six, and I was more upset that Yu was leaving too
> 
> Hmm
> 
> Thanks for sending these
> 
> :)
> 
> Would it be weird if I asked for your actual phone number? For after you give Yu his phone back?
> 
> And for... just in case Akira tries to start ignoring us again? It seems like he's staying with your family this year, right?

And, well, Futaba would feel bad about saying no after that. So she trades numbers with Nanako before forwarding the two pictures of Lavenza to her own phone, and deleting the messages between herself and Nanako off Yu's.

And because it's not the kind of thing she usually thinks about, it doesn't occur to Futaba until later to wonder why Nanako hadn't been in school at 1:30 on a Wednesday.

-//-

_May 13_

_After School_

-//-

To celebrate the end of exams, they go into Mementos after school on Friday.

(Akira will admit that it's a weird way to celebrate-- _hey! let's go fight monsters in a gross version of the subway system!_ but they're all weird too, so)

It's been a busy few days, even without any more trips into the metaverse. Akira had given Ann and Ryuji the stripped down version of how they'd figured out that Akechi... does not have their best interests at heart. This had basically boiled down to Akira explaining that an old friend had been forced out of Tokyo because she'd been asking questions about _him_ , and that this could only have been caused by someone that knows Akira has access to the metaverse--ie, Akechi.

He'd actually meant to give a more detailed explanation, but Ryuji had started to crow about how he'd known Akechi was bad news all along, and the conversation had immediately made a hard right turn into How to Act Normal About This if We Run Into Akechi Again.

Speaking of Akechi, Akira had started his campaign to make friends by sending a few vaguely friendly texts in his direction. He's absolutely determined to find out more about the person that had ruined Naoto's life and also knows about the Phantom Thieves. So far he hasn't gotten more than polite responses, but Akira's not ready to give up. He'll figure it out.

On top of that, they've also started making plans to go down into Mementos (Ann and Ryuji still haven't even seen it), to help Morgana recover the memories he's sure are down there, and to hopefully find Lavenza after what Rise had seen with her Persona.

Is it a good idea? With some horrible darkness waiting at the bottom, and a Reaper wandering around somewhere? No, it probably isn't. But everyone knows the risks, everyone is on board, and so they're going for it. 

And when they're _not_ talking about either Akechi or the Mementos plans, there's plenty of other things. There's Shiho's recovery (slow but steady, according to Ann), or Mishima's phan site (which has already managed to freak Yusuke out after the name of one of Madarame's ex-students had appeared on it--they're _pretty_ sure it's a coincidence). Or, if all else fails, there's always exams to talk about, because, oh yea, _that's going on too_.

It's been a busy few days, and Akira is honestly looking forward to the relative simplicity of just fighting some Shadows.

Morgana skips school on Friday (apparently he's bored of hiding in Akira's desk watching absolutely nothing happen during the tests) and stays home with Futaba instead. That means it's just Akira with Ann and Ryuji heading from Shujin to Mementos.

( _"Gross,"_ Ann says, emphatically, as soon as they get there)

("This place is _weird_ ," Ryuji agrees)

Futaba, Morgana, and Yusuke are already there, talking about (Akira listens for a second) _art_ in serious tones. This isn't necessarily a surprise, since Yusuke is involved, but he's a little surprised to see the other two so involved in the conversation. 

"Hey," he says, as he, Ann, and Ryuji join the group. "What's up?"

"We're planning a heist," Futaba says.

Akira opens his mouth, but because his brain is torn between asking _why would you do that_ and _why didn't you wait for me_ , he doesn't actually manage to say anything.

"Cool," Ryuji says, while his I-should-try-and-be-a-responsible-leader side is still fighting with his everything-I-touch-is-trouble tendencies. "More Treasures?"

"No," Yusuke says, his tone somber. "Something in the real world." He stands up from where he's been sitting on the floor with Futaba and Morgana, and unexpectedly bows deeply in apology. "I accidentally did something that might have consequences for you," he says. "Possibly for the rest of us as well, but... specifically for you. I wouldn't have been worried before we found out about Akechi, but now that we do, I think... this could be bad."

"What did you do?" Akira asks.

"Look," Futaba says, and pulls up something on her laptop, before turning the screen around so that they can all see it. "Yusuke's sensei is having an art exhibition that starts tomorrow," she says. 

"Hang on," Ryuji interrupts. "Like an actual exhibition that people will actually pay money to go and see?"

"Of course," Yusuke says.

"So he really is famous or something?" Ryuji asks.

"Haven't you been paying attention at all?" Futaba asks.

"Yes I _have_ ," Ryuji huffs, crossing his arms defensively over his chest. "I just... kind of thought you were exaggerating."

"Nope," Akira says. "He's actually famous, just not as actually famous as he thinks he is. So... is it the exhibition you guys are planning a heist on, or something else?"

"Just one painting from it," Morgana says. 

"The one I did," Yusuke volunteers.

"The one of me?" Ann says. "You never showed me how that turned out."

"Well," Yusuke says carefully. "We've been kind of busy with the Palace, and then... well, I've had a hard time getting away from Sensei for the past few days, but..." He hesitates for a long time.

"This is how it turned out," Futaba says flatly, scrolling down on her computer. 

Akira squats down to get a better view of what looks like a promotional pamphlet Futaba had downloaded off the exhibition's website, if the logo at the top is anything to go by. There's some information about Madarame as an artist, and then a few reproductions of the paintings that will be on display and up for sale.

" _Oh_ ," Akira says.

"That's Carmen," Ann says flatly, looking at the picture. Then, more hesitantly, "Or..."

Akira nods, understanding the confusion. There's something about the painting that's Ann, but also something that's Carmen, and something that gives him the impression of her mask and costume.

"I... did not know that at the time," Yusuke says. "I finished this before I even saw you in the metaverse."

"Then how'd you know what to paint?" Ryuji asks.

"It just felt--true."

Ann and Ryuji look to Akira like they're expecting an interpretation. He shrugs helplessly.

"Anyway," Morgana says. "The point is that this is going to be up for sale during the exhibition. And maybe it'll be fine, but we _just_ found out that Akechi knows about the metaverse, and he might still sell us out to the police like he did with Akira's friend. If that happens, we really, really don't want anything like this hanging around."

" _No_ ," Ann says firmly.

"I'm really sorry," Yusuke says again. "I didn't know that it meant anything when I painted it, and then I was going to replace it with something else for the exhibition, but... with the Palace and everything, I didn't have as much time as I thought I would, and Sensei insisted on taking this one."

"Okay," Akira says. "That is--definitely potentially bad."

"No kidding!" Morgana says. "What kind of Phantom Thieves would we be if we just let everyone know what our disguises are!"

"So we're stealing it back," Futaba says. "I hacked the website this morning when Yusuke texted me, and it's offline for now, so no one else can actually see this." She gestures to the digital image. "But since the exhibition opens tomorrow, whoever the sponsor has as tech support has been working all day to try and get it back up. And obviously they don't have a chance at getting it back up if I want it to stay offline, but I'm trying not to make it obvious that this is intentional. Hopefully they still think this is just a glitch."

"So we need to come up with something fast," Akira says. "Got it."

"I used the website's downtime to switch _this_ out with a version that doesn't include the painting of Ann," Futaba says, jabbing a finger at the pamphlet on her screen. "I got that taken care of before we came in here, since I knew I'd lose wi-fi in Mementos. But we need to do something about the actual painting before it opens tomorrow."

"So we're heisting," Yusuke adds.

"Got it," Akira says. "So we--"

"Eh," Futaba says, holding a hand up to stop him. " _We're_ heisting, you are not."

"Why am I not heisting too?" Akira asks, taken aback.

"Because you're on probation," Yusuke says. "And our plan is terrible, and if we get caught, you're going to be in a lot more trouble than the rest of us." He pauses, then adds, " _Especially_ because we would be stealing from Sensei, who specifically hates you."

"I really don't like the idea of just sitting this out," Akira tells him.

"You're not... exactly sitting it out ," Morgana says. "Because you're going to be the distraction. But we decided that doesn't count."

"How does that not count as heisting?" Akira asks.

"It doesn't count," Futaba says. "Because you don't get to know the rest of the plan."

Yusuke nods. "You just have to show up and keep Sensei's attention. It should be easy, because as soon as he sees you, he's going to want you _out_."

"Guess it's kind of helpful that he hates me," Akira mutters. "But I seriously don't get to know the rest of the plan?"

"No," Futaba says. "Otherwise you're going to try and help, and we don't want you to. _We'll_ all be okay if we're caught."

"Probably," Morgana adds.

"How about us?" Ryuji asks, gesturing to himself and Ann. "Do we get to know?"

"Oh yea," Morgana says. "We definitely need you guys for the plan."

Akira tries not to mope too visibly. "So if I'm not allowed to know about it," he says. "Do you want to save your plotting for after we're done checking out Mementos?"

"Yep," Futaba says. She shuts her laptop and stows it in her bag. "I went down to the first floor with Fox and Mona before the rest of you guys got here. No Reapers and no Akechis, so we should be pretty safe to poke around."

"Cool," Akira says, and tries to refocus on the plan for today, and not on the heisting he is apparently not going to be allowed to join in on. "Great. So everyone knows what we're doing today, right?"

They've been over this already, more than once, ironing it out during the breaks between exams, and through the group chat in the evenings.

"Going down through the first two floors," Ryuji says, ticking points off on his fingers. "Checking out those doors Oracle says are at the bottom of the second floor. And seeing if we can find the Shadow that belongs to that guy that showed up on the phansite."

"Nakanohara," Yusuke supplies.

"Right," Ryuji says. "That guy."

"And you're _positive_ he's not going to have a full Palace, Mona?" Ann asks. 

"Definitely," Morgana says. "Mementos is everyone's Palace, so if he's here, his heart hasn't gotten distorted enough to develop into something like what Kamoshida had."

Or, Akira thinks, like Futaba's Pyramid. He glances over at her, but she doesn't seem bothered. 

"That's good," Yusuke says thoughtfully. "I never knew him very well, but he loved his art. Until Sensei's plagiarism convinced him that there was nothing in art that was _worth_ his love."

"That's really sad," Ann says quietly.

"It is," Yusuke agrees. "Which is why I hope we're still thinking about trying to take the Treasure from Sensei's Palace at some point."

"Definitely," Ryuji says. "Sounds like he deserves it."

"Soon," Akira assures him. "But one thing at a time, right? And today we're focusing on Mementos."

"Maybe Nakanohara will even have something that will help us figure out how to deal with his Palace," Yusuke muses.

"Yea," Akira agrees. "So--everyone ready?" Nods all around. "Let's go."

(And if he's feeling _slightly_ guilty that they're checking out Mementos before Madarame's Palace, when Mementos is going to help him find Lavenza and Morgana find his memories, but isn't going to do Yusuke any good at all--)

(Well, he'd meant it when he'd said they'd work on Madarame's Palace soon)

-//-

_May 13_

_Evening_

-//-

"How was your... whatever you kids have been up to?" Sojiro asks when Futaba and Akira come back to Leblanc after their exploratory trip to Mementos.

"Good," Akira says.

"It was a lot of fun," Futaba adds.

"Fun, she says," Morgana mutters under his breath. Futaba reaches over to Akira's bag to boop the not-cat on the top of the head. 

"You had fun too, Mona," she informs him.

He grumbles.

But it _had_ actually been fun. They'd found the little... pocket dimension thing where Nakanohara's Shadow waited, and they'd been able to change his heart before that distortion could grow into a real Palace.

(He'd cried a little after they took him down, while he apologized)

(Yusuke had comforted him, and when he _promised_ to make sure Madarame would never be able to take from anyone else what had been taken from Nakanohara, Futaba could understand why he's Akira's best friend)

They'd fought Shadows, and because there hadn't been any deadline or Palace ruler to worry about, there hadn't been the same atmosphere of tension and worry. And so, while they'd fought, they'd... had fun. Ryuji had crowed over every solid hit he got in, Morgana had _turned into a bus_ , and Yusuke had cracked several terrible, ice based puns in such a serious voice that Futaba had not been sure if they were on purpose.

(She's _still_ not sure)

It had been more like hanging out than anything else. Just a bunch of friends... _hanging out_ after school, telling bad jokes and teasing each other. And Futaba's never had that before, not really, but this is what she'd never known she wanted out of friends. 

And then they'd cleared the second floor, and come to a door that absolutely will not open for them. 

They'd shrugged and decided to call it there for the day, maybe do some thinking about how to get it open and come back later. 

(Akira's been quiet ever since)

Sojiro seems to notice how tired they are, because no one talks much during dinner. After, while Sojiro starts to go through the motions of closing up shop, Akira wanders upstairs and Futaba follows him while Morgana stays behind, grudgingly finishing his own dinner of cat food.

Futaba is starting to feel a little guilty about telling Sojiro to just get the cheapest brand, actually. She doesn't think she'd like to eat bad cat food all the time either.

That, however, is a later problem. Right now, she's kind of happy to have an excuse to go up and talk to Akira alone. 

He's stretched out on his back in bed (his whole mattress-on-top-of-a-stack-of-crates arrangement), one arm up so he can scroll through his phone without turning over. As Futaba reaches the top of the stairs, he drops it on his face and mumbles something that sounds like a drawn out _ow_.

"You look tired," Futaba says.

"A little," Akira admits, sitting up. He takes his glasses off and squints at them, checking for dropped-phone related damage. "Don't tell Morgana, he'll insist I need an earlier bedtime."

Futaba _almost_ laughs, but the look on his face makes her think that maybe he's being serious. "I won't," she says instead. "Anyway, there's something I wanted to talk to you about, if... that's okay?"

"Sure. What's up?"

Futaba sits on the couch next to Akira's ancient CRT TV, fidgets with her phone for a second or two, and decides that there's really no point in trying to be subtle. 

"Who is Lavenza, exactly?"

The question catches him off guard, that's obvious immediately from the way he turns and looks at her like a deer staring at a car's headlights.

(It hits Futaba that she's never seen him without either his glasses or his mask. He looks younger without either of them, a little more like the picture Nanako had sent of her and him and Yusuke with Lavenza)

"That's not exactly easy to explain," he says slowly. He reaches over to put his phone and glasses on his desk, dropping it on top of the lockpick and stelthanol materials. Futaba has the distinct impression that he's buying time to think through his answer.

"She's an old friend, it sounds like?" she asks.

"Yea." Akira eases himself back onto the bed, rubbing his face. There's a sort of half-smile behind his hands. "Yea, she... I met her the year I got my Persona. She taught me basically everything about fighting Shadows and the metaverse, everything like that." 

"So she was like a teacher, too?" Futaba asks.

"I guess that's part of what she was," Akira says. "I mean--yea, she taught me a lot."

Futaba thinks of the picture and says, "How did she know so much about the metaverse?"

"Futaba..." He makes a noise of frustration, but she doesn't think it's directed at her, exactly. "It's complicated. Everything about Lavenza is kind of complicated."

"Why?"

"Because... I don't know. Because I met a lot of people that year who are still incredibly important to me. Yu's a brother to me. His uncle raised me, his cousin's like my little sister. That was the year I met Yusuke, who's been my best friend ever since. But _Lavenza_?" Akira shakes his head. "I don't--know what the word is for what she was. Just that she was--she still _is_ important to me. And I think she's kind of--in a lot of danger. I _need_ to find a way to help her."

And something about the way he says it makes it hard to find any kind of response to that. Or maybe it's something about his face, the way his eyes look sad and _guilty_ when he talks about her. 

"We're going to find her, you know," Futaba says. "If that means getting all the way to the bottom of Mementos, then that's what we'll do."

"I hope so," Akira says. He makes a face and then gives her a sheepish smile and a complicated shrug. "Sorry, I know I'm not really saying much, but it's just--hard to talk about."

And maybe Futaba's gotten a little too nosy, anyway. She does, definitely, want to know more about this person that had apparently taught Akira about the metaverse. But he's frowning now, and obviously her questions have gotten a little too close to something--heavy. So she makes an effort to lighten the mood.

"It's okay," she tells Akira, with a perfectly straight face. "I think that maybe if my girlfriend was stuck in the bottom of Mementos I might feel a little weird talking about her too."

(Are the two of them a thing? It doesn't sound like they've even seen each other in ages, but he definitely talks about her like they might have been a thing)

And immediately all of the tension goes flying out of the room as Akira groans and leans back against the wall. "You're as bad about the girlfriend thing as Nanako," he complains, voice muffled through his fingers. "Hey, how about we talk about _anything else_ now?"

"We could talk about the heist we're planning," Futaba suggests.

"Am I allowed to know about that, then?" Akira asks.

She grins at him. "No."

He throws his pillow at her, which she ducks. It sails over the railing and down the stairs, where--judging by the outraged meowing--it hits Morgana on his way up.

-//-

_May 14_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Futaba has never helped plan a heist before.

She's never had anything she wanted to heist before, to be fair, unless her Medjed exploits count. And, judging by how she feels like she's about to vibrate out of her own skin from sheer nerves, she doesn't think it does. It doesn't feel like all that sitting in her bedroom, cracking open websites and databases, has prepared her for this at _all_.

They meet in Shibuya Station, as planned, to go over everything one last time and synchronize their watches.

"Only I don't think there's a point to synchronizing watches, actually," Futaba says, when they're all gathered in a tight little huddle. "Because all of us have cell phones anyway, and those are all going to show the same time anyway, so--"

"We get it, Futaba," Ryuji interrupts. "We'll be fine without all that stuff anyway."

"I know," Futaba says. She's _really_ wishing Akira was here right now, even though she knows how dangerous it would have been to risk him getting caught.

(She--doesn't want him to leave Leblanc. And he would have to, almost definitely, if he got caught doing something like this. It's not just the stealing, it's who they're stealing _from._ Both Akira and Yusuke have been pretty clear about his sensei's extreme dislike for Akira)

"So everyone knows what they're supposed to do, right?" Ryuji asks. 

"Do _you_?" Futaba asks, before she can stop herself. It's the nerves--she takes a deep breath, but it doesn't help.

"Yea," he says. "I have the easy part, anyway."

" _And_ the part that's most likely to get you caught," Morgana points out. "So be _careful_ , Ryuji."

"Let's just go over it one more time," Yusuke says quickly, which is good because it means Ryuji doesn't get a chance to say whatever he'd opened his mouth to start yelling about. "I already have the replacement painting done and in the staff area at the back of the exhibit area."

(That part had been Morgana's idea--they can't just _take_ the painting of Ann without someone noticing, so they're going to _replace_ it with another one. Since the original and the replacement are both of Ann and by Yusuke, with the same general composition, layout, and colors, it shouldn't be _that_ easy for anyone to notice the switch)

(They are all taking Yusuke's word for this, since no one else knows the first thing about art)

"And no one thought it was suspicious?" Ann asks anxiously.

Yusuke shrugs. "I've been helping Sensei with getting everything moved here from the atelier anyway, so the staff is used to seeing me around. I put it in a corner with my school bag and said it was for a project I'm working on."

"Great," Futaba says. "Step one, already done."

"What about you?" he asks her. "Do you have what you need?"

She points to the bag with her laptop in it. "I brought my stuff. And I checked out the building this morning--" She'd had to come up with an (honestly pretty unimpressive) excuse for Sojiro when he saw her leaving at a time when all her friends would clearly be in school, _and_ she'd had to duck some truancy officers, but she'd managed it. "They have a little bit of security around the cameras, but not much. I won't even have to be inside to hack it. And everything else I need is completely unprotected."

"Good," Yusuke says. "I don't think I could even get all of you in. It'll be hard enough with just Ryuji and Ann."

"And me," Morgana says.

"Yea," Ryuji says. "But you're going in Yusuke's bag so no one can see you, and that doesn't even _count_."

"It counts," Morgana mutters, but doesn't argue.

"So Futaba sets up outside somewhere," Ann says. 

"In position by 7:15," Futaba says.

"Yea," Ann says. "And Yusuke gets me and Ryuji in through the back, by saying we're friends that couldn't afford tickets."

"Which is true, actually," Ryuji says. "We are friend, and I looked up how much you have to pay to get in there and it's way too much just to look at some paintings--"

" _Ryuji_ ," Futaba says, half a second before Yusuke can object.

(As a team, they are _kind of_ a mess without Akira around, she's realizing. Or maybe it's just easier to bicker in the real world when there's no Shadows around to worry about)

"Anyway," Yusuke says. "Ann can flirt with the guard--"

"I still don't like this part of the plan," Ann says. "It's gross."

"Sorry," Morgana says, and he sounds like he genuinely _is_. "But we need to make sure he's not paying attention to the cameras when Futaba starts messing with them."

"And there's only going to be one?" Ann says. "You're sure, Yusuke?"

"There was only one when I dropped everything off earlier," Yusuke says. "And you'll only have to keep him busy for ten minutes."

"I'll turn the lights off at 7:20," Futaba says.

"They still haven't figured out whatever problem they're having with the fuses," Yusuke says. "I was worried they might have gotten it fixed before the opening today--"

Which would have been _bad_ , since their plan falls apart if there's isn't a valid alternate explanation for the lights going out.

"But I guess they haven't yet," Yusuke finishes. "The guard is supposed to evacuate everyone from the exhibition area before trying to fix anything, so once he's herded everyone out of the area with the painting of Ann, Ryuji will have a clear path to the painting and back."

"And I'll be lookout," Morgana adds, not sounding entirely happy. "I wish there was something more exciting I could do to help."

"No," Futaba says, waving a finger at him. "We need you as our lookout." Ryuji is probably the least subtle of the Phantom Thieves, but Ryuji's painting of Ann is pretty big, so he's _also_ the only one strong enough to run in and out with the replacement quickly enough. "You're a tiny black cat, no one's going to notice you hanging around. And Ryuji's not going to be paying attention to whether anyone's coming."

"Right," Ryuji says. "Because I'll have my hands full with the painting."

No, Futaba thinks, because he wouldn't be paying attention _anyway_. But she bites her tongue and doesn't say this out loud.

"It's almost time," Yusuke says, glancing at his phone. "Should we get going?"

"And someone needs to tell Akira when he needs to go in as the distraction," Ann reminds them.

"I'll do it," Futaba says. 

"And you guys are _sure_ we shouldn't tell Akira any of the plan?" Ryuji asks. "Because it feels like having him knowing what's going on would help. He'd be a better distraction, at least.'

"No," Yusuke says firmly. "No, we... just no. Not this one."

And he doesn't quite meet anyone else's gaze as he says this.

-//-

_May 14_

_Evening_

-//-

**7:05 PM**

Akira really hates not knowing what the plan is. He hates that he's stuck just kind of skulking around outside Madarame's exhibition, waiting for one of the other Thieves to text him that it's time for go inside and be a distraction. He wouldn't mind (as much) if he at least knew what the others would be doing while he's busy holding Madarame's attention. Stealing the painting, he knows that much, but--

Okay, so he just really wants to help out with the stealing Yusuke's painting part of the plan. It sounds like a _lot_ more fun than being shouted at by Madarame, again. The man had taken an instant dislike to him from the day Akira and Yusuke had met (and _yes_ , Akira has dragged Yusuke into enough trouble to more than justify that _but still_ ), and Akira is generally unenthusiastic about seeing him, ever. 

> **Futaba**
> 
> We're all ready
> 
> Please wow us with your amazing distraction skills :)
> 
> You sure you don't need help with the fun part?
> 
> PROBATION, AKIRA
> 
> Alright, alright, I'm going 

He makes a face and puts his phone away, then goes to offend a semi-famous artist just by existing.

-//-

**7:10 PM**

Yusuke takes Ann and Ryuji around the back of the building to the side entrance, where he opens the door and gestures the other two inside. The security guard--the same one that had been on duty when Yusuke was there earlier--waves languidly at him, and then frowns. 

"Hey," he says. "You're not supposed to bring people in this way, you know?"

"They're friends of mine," Yusuke says quickly. Too quickly? Hopefully not _suspiciously_ quickly. "They wanted to see the exhibit, but..." He trails off, hoping the guard will fill in the blanks.

"We're kinda broke," Ryuji say bluntly.

The guard stares at them all with his eyebrows slightly raised, then snorts in amusement and shakes his head in an _I'm not paid enough to care about this_ kind of way. "Sure," he says. "Why not."

"Thank you!" Ann says, and _Yusuke_ can definitely tell that she's putting on an act, but luckily the guard doesn't seem to notice.

(It's a good thing, he thinks vaguely, that they're not going up against any kind of guards with actual training, and that this guy is really here for show more than anything else)

"Is there a bathroom back here anywhere?" Ryuji asks loudly, as Ann twirls her hair around a finger and strikes up a conversation with the guard. 

"I'll show you," Yusuke says, just as loudly.

"Could you two sound any _more_ suspicious?" Morgana hisses.

"Shh," Yusuke says, and the cat retreats to the bottom of his bag. He leads Ryuji away from Ann and the security guard, toward the storage room where he'd left his school things and the replacement painting. On the way, he points out where Ryuji is going to have to take the painting after the lights go out, describing as exactly as he can where he'll need to go. 

"I got it, I got it," Ryuji says. "This the room where you left your stuff?"

"Yes," Yusuke says, and reaches out to open the door.

...it's locked.

**7:15 PM**

It actually takes Madarame a little bit of time to spot Akira after he walks in, which makes for a surprisingly stressful ten minutes. He has no idea what the rest of the Phantom Thieves are doing, but literally he has _one job_ and that's to keep Madarame busy and distracted.

It's a weird relief when he feels the weight of unfriendly eyes on the back of his head, and turns to see Madarame glaring at him.

Okay, well--if he's going to be a distraction, he's going to be a _good_ one. He forces all his uncertain doubts to the back of his mind and gives Madarame the most obnoxious smile he can muster.

It works, apparently, because the man makes a beeline straight toward him. There's almost no one else left in the exhibit at this point--there's only about fifteen minutes left until it closes for the night--but those few people that are there are pretty much all looking at them.

"What," the artist says. "Are you doing here?"

"I bought a ticket," Akira says, which is actually true. Maybe Yusuke would have been able to get him a ticket or something, but Akira had figured it would be better to make it seem like there's definitely no connection between them.

"Regardless," Madarame says. "I've told you that I don't want to see you anywhere near Yusuke again."

"I don't see Yusuke around here anywhere," Akira points out. He keeps his tone polite, if only because he can see Madarame's eye visibly starting to twitch at it. "Maybe I just wanted to look at some art."

"A delinquent like you?" Madarame asks. "I doubt it."

Akira shrugs. Considers his next words, and then takes a risk. "I haven't seen any of Yusuke's work in a while," he says. "Maybe I just wanted to look at something he did."

Madarame's eyes narrow--studying him, calculating. Akira can almost see the him wondering how much he knows about the plagiarism. "You came to the wrong place, in that case," Madarame says. "Every work on display here is one of mine."

"Oh," Akira says, with a smirk that is calculated to piss Madarame off as much as possible. "Right, _of course_ it is."

(He's better at this distraction thing than he'd expected)

"Alright," Madarame says, and there is so much anger audible in his voice that Akira immediately realizes he's gone too far. "That's it, I want you out of here, _now_. I don't care what you say you're here for, I want you gone."

(On the other hand, if he gets kicked out, then he is no good at _all_ as a distraction)

"No," Akira says, because what else is he supposed to try? "This is a public place."

"Don't make me call security," Madarame says. "You--"

"Excuse me!"

Suddenly there's a girl at Akira's side, smiling sweetly up at Madarame. "I'm so sorry to interrupt," she says. "But I just saw you talking, and--well, I had no _idea_ you knew each other, so I thought I would come over and say hello." 

Madarame makes a noise of nonspecific disapproval, and Akira can't tell whether he's objecting to him, or to the girl. "You... know each other, then," he says, striving to return to politeness.

"Oh yes," says the girl brightly. She looks over at Akira, and adds. "Akira is a friend of mine."

"I... right," Akira says. He's fighting hard to keep the confusion off his face, because _he has absolutely no idea who this girl is_. "Hello... friend?"

And then the lights go out.

-//-

**7:20 PM**

Ryuji curses for several seconds, and only stops when he happens to see Yusuke's shocked expression. "That's kind of the signal that I'm supposed to be moving the paintings now," he points out.

"I know," Yusuke says. "But--" He gestures wordlessly but expressively at the locked door.

"You didn't say it would be locked!" Ryuji says.

"It _isn't_ , usually!"

His bag shifts as Morgana jumps out of it. "I got this!" he says. "You guys just--stop arguing and tell me if anyone gets close."

"What are _you_ going to do?" Yusuke asks.

"Pick the lock," Morgana says. "I've been _practicing_ since Kamoshida's Palace."

"Oh," Ryuji says. "Right. Because you were stuck in that cell for _ages_."

"Shut up, Ryuji!"

He shuts up, because they actually are kind of screwed if Morgana can't get them into the storage room.

 _Click_.

The door swings open, and Ryuji grabs Yusuke's arm and pulls him in with him. "Come on," he says. "That took longer than it was supposed to, I'm never going to get everything moved by myself."

"But--"

Yusuke glances at the time on his phone, and whatever he sees there convinces him to stop arguing and actually help.

-//-

**7:25 PM**

Futaba crouches in the side alley next to the building, her fingers flying over the keyboard as she jumps from one camera viewpoint to the next, watching the rest of the Phantom Thieves, and keeping a mental log of how much footage she's going to have to erase after they're done here. 

Akria's with Madarame, way on the other side of the exhibit, which is great. Her eyes linger on him for a second, making absolutely sure that he's _there_ and he's _visible_ and that just in case everything goes wrong, he will be very much _not under suspicion._

(The truth is, they probably could have done this without Akira distracting Madarame. But she wants to be absolutely, completely sure that he's not going to be blamed for anything, and being within eyesight of Madarame during the entire heist is the best alibi she could think of)

He's having a conversation--an _argument_ , judging by their body language--with Madarame, and... also with someone else that's just joined in. A girl about the same age as Akira, or maybe a little older. That hadn't exactly been part of the plan, but Futaba figures Akira can probably handle whoever this is, so _whatever_.

The security guard is already moving toward the front of the exhibit, away from the painting, so that's _good_. Ann's with him, helpfully saying... something or other. Futaba can't actually hear any of it because these cameras are video only, but it's at least keeping the guard's attention pointed away from where Yusuke, Ryuji, and Morgana are...

Still in the storage room?

"Come _on_ , guys," she mutters, watching them stand in front of the locked door for what feels like forever. It's already 7:24 by the time they finally get inside, which gives them _not very much time_ to actually get the new painting out and up on the wall. Not to mention sneaking the original away again...

-//-

**7:25 PM**

Ann doesn't exactly know what she's supposed to do after finishing the important-but-not-great task of distracting the security guard so he won't notice how long Ryuji and Yusuke have been gone. He solves that problem for her though, telling her that everyone needs to be evacuated while the power's out, and steering her out toward the exhibition. So, good. Probably. At least she has an alibi, and that's one less of them that might fall under suspicion if anything goes wrong.

There's only about half a dozen people in the exhibit when they get out, and Ann is a _little_ surprised to see someone else standing with Akira and Madarame.

 _Who's that?_ she mouths at him, when no one is looking at either of them.

He lifts both arms in a completely confused shrug, then drops them immediately when Madarame's eyes shoot toward him. Ann looks quickly away too, and both of them pretend very hard not to know each other as they're steered outside.

-//-

**7:30**

Morgana is feeling much better about his role in this heist now that his lockpicking skills have come in handy. Sitting around as lookout? _Boring_. Getting the storage room door open so they can actually carry out the heist? _Awesome_. 

He follows behind the other two, calling out advice and keeping half an ear open for trouble as they work.

"You guys are going to drop it," he tells them.

By this point, they're in the back of the exhibit, original painting already on the ground, new painting halfway up.

"Shh!" they both hiss at him.

"I'm just saying."

" _Not. Helping."_

Sure, maybe not, but that's just because he's less than a foot tall and can't even _reach_ the painting. But had either of them been able to pick the lock on that door? Nope.

He's helping plenty.

"Okay," Yusuke says, panting slightly as they finally get the painting in place.

"Smaller painting next time," Ryuji tells him. " _Smaller_."

"I'm not painting anything from the metaverse next time," Yusuke says. "Come on. Let's leave the back way before anyone wonders what we're doing here."

-//-

**7:30 PM**

Akira loses Madarame once everyone's outside, but figures that it probably doesn't matter that much at this point. He's not sure exactly how Futaba (it had _definitely_ been Futaba) had cut the power, but the security guard that had come out with Ann is announcing that it's standard policy to evacuate during a power outage, probably just a blown fuse, nothing to worry about but no one is allowed back inside until he gets it taken care of...

When the guard turns to go... fix whatever it is that Futaba had broken, Akira turns to the girl that's still standing next to him. "Hi," he says. "Sorry, but--can you tell me what that was all about back there?"

She flushes. "Sorry," she says. "But I recognized you from school, and I didn't think the way that artist was treating you was very nice. I thought that maybe I could help by stepping in."

So she's a Shujin student? Great. Awesome. Akira's reputation as dangerous delinquent with an assault on his record has _not_ improved any since the start of the school year.

"It's just," the girl continues brightly. "You were asking questions about the volleyball team a few weeks ago, weren't you? Before all those horrible things about Kamoshida came out?"

"Well--" Okay, yea, he _had_ been, along with Ann and Ryuji, but the only things Akira had gotten out of that were an awkward encounter with Kamoshida, and the disapproval of the student council president that thought he was asking too many questions. "Yes?" he says.

"I think that was--" She hesitates. "Well, no one else was trying to do anything before he confessed. I think it was brave."

Akira bites back a grin, because honestly? Talking to people at school to find out if anyone knew anything about what Kamoshida was doing to the volleyball team hadn't been _nearly_ as hard as facing his Shadow down in his Palace. "Thanks," he says, since he can't say any of what he's thinking out loud.

"And also..."

She seems suddenly reluctant.

"Also?"

"Also, I've seen you on the roof. With the old garden beds. That was you, right?"

"What? Oh, right." He shrugs with one shoulder. "Yea, I've been up there." Mostly taking whatever happens to be growing for help in the metaverse, like the wheat he'd used to break Morgana out of his cell. 

"I've sort of been thinking about trying to grow some vegetables up there," the girl says. "Only I don't have a lot of experience with gardening, and I know there _used_ to be a gardening club that met up there, but they were a group of third years last year and they've graduated--" She pauses in her enthusiastic little speech, and flushes. "Sorry. It's just that you're the only other one at school now that seems like you're interested at all, so... I've been trying to think of a way to introduce myself and see if you'd be willing to help me learn, so I can maybe even get the gardening club restarted."

"And then you saw me being shouted at by Madarame and thought it was a good chance for an introduction?" Akira asks.

"Well," she says. "My father and the artist here have some contacts in common, I suppose. I don't know the details, but... something financial." She shrugs. "And we were both sent tickets as a courtesy, so I know he knows who I am, and people generally don't want to risk offending me in case it also offends my father. I thought--maybe I could use that to get him to leave you alone."

It had been a nice gesture, Akira thinks, even if there is probably no power on this Earth that will make Madarame okay with Akira being around. 

"I'm sorry," the girl says. "I know that's--not a very honest way of introducing myself."

"We actually haven't done introductions yet," Akira points out. "I guess you know me?" She's heard his name at least, she'd used it earlier in front of Madarame.

"Only from the rumors," she admits with an apologetic wince, as if that's somehow her fault. "And my name is Haru Okumura. It's nice to meet you."

"You too," Akira says. And then adds, because she'd obviously meant well, and it's not her fault that she doesn't know he'd been intentionally pissing Madarame off as a distraction, "And thank you for trying to come over and help."

"It was no problem at all," Haru assures him.

"And if you're serious about wanting to garden," Akira says. "I..." Honestly? He _really_ misses the garden back home, and Nanako, and all the time they've spent there over the years. Not to mention, anything they grow is definitely going to help with Palaces in the future. "Yea, sure. Why not? It sounds like fun. I can't promise I'll be around all the time, but I definitely wouldn't mind."

"That's alright," Haru says quickly. "I have commitments with my father that can be hard to avoid, sometimes. Maybe if we were to just meet up once a week?"

"That sounds like a deal," Akira says, and (Haru laughs a little) they shake on it.

(Akira is laughing too, for just a second, until he hears the whisper of Lavenza's voice in his ear like a butterfly's wings, and suddenly his smile freezes on his face)

(He... wouldn't have expected something like this, not from someone he's just met--but after hearing that, he feels a lot more inclined to take this gardening deal seriously)

Later, when Haru has said goodbye and they've gone their separate ways, and Akira is sitting on a bench several blocks away waiting for the others, he pulls out his phone and texts Nanako.

> **Nanako**
> 
> So how's the garden going?
> 
> TERRIBLE
> 
> :(
> 
> I need you to come back and do all the heavy lifting :p 
> 
> And I thought that you missed me. Turns out you just miss the free manual labor
> 
> I do miss you!
> 
> It's just that I ALSO miss having someone that can lift those giant mulch bags
> 
> Maybe you'll be back next year?

Akira stares down at the phone for a long time, and doesn't answer. He has no _idea_ what he's going to do after his probation is over, just that it's probably going to be completely out of his control. At last, fingers moving slowly, he types out _I really hope so_ , does not add _but I don't know if it's possible,_ and hits send.

Which is the point when his friends come running over, buoyed up and excited from their successful heist, all talking at once as they _finally_ tell him their plan.

"So did everything go okay with you?" Ann asks, when the conversation has finally died down a little. 

Akira shrugs. "Oh yea," he says. "It went great. I had an argument with Madarame, maybe made a new friend, possibly joined a gardening club?"

"Huh," Yusuke says.

"What?"

He shakes his head. "I'm just interested to see how long it takes you to turn a gardening club into an excuse to make more trouble."

"Probably not long," Akira admits.

"Maybe we should warn this new friend," Ann says thoughtfully. 

"Considering that I'm the only one here that _didn't_ just participate in an art heist," Akira says. "I think that's very unfair."

Absolutely no one seems impressed by this argument, and Akira finds himself fighting to keep a smile off his face. It's nice to have friends that understand him.

They hang around for another hour or so, then Ann takes the original painting with her as she heads home (her parents are out of town for another couple weeks, and there won't be anyone there to ask questions while they figure out what to do with it) and the rest of them head their separate ways.

-//-

**9:10 PM**

The atelier is dark when Yusuke gets home, so at first he assumes that he's gotten back before Madarame. Instead, he finds his sensei waiting for him in the dark, face as serious as Yusuke has ever seen him.

"Care to explain," he says, with slow and careful enunciation. "What happened to your painting during that... _farce_ at the exhibition today, Yusuke?"

Yusuke does not panic. It had not escaped his attention during the heist planning that the only person likely to realize the paintings had been exchanged is his sensei. Basic similarities and composition will be enough to fool everyone else, but his sensei?

Probably not.

(He thinks he knows the way Futaba thinks well enough by now to guess that her _Akira as distraction_ plan is mostly an _Akira needs an alibi_ plan. He appreciates this, because it means that he is the most logical suspect, and not his best friend)

So, because he has been half expecting this all along, because he has been thinking about how he is supposed to respond to this inevitable confrontation, he manages to look his sensei right in the eyes as he says, "So it _is_ my painting, then? Because according to what you've told everyone else, it was painted by _you_."

Anger flashes in his sensei's eyes. Yusuke reminds himself that he has fought Shadows, and does not flinch away.

"So that's what today was about?" his sensei asks. "I have explained this to you, Yusuke my boy. You are a young artist, and the potential damage to your eventual career if you were to put something out under your own name that is _not_ well received--"

"It's plagiarism," Yusuke says.

(Does he need to have this argument now? No. He probably _should_ not have it today, as a matter of fact. But now that it's started, he can't seem to hold himself back)

" _I_ painted that," he says. "I did. And you took the credit for it, just like you've been taking the credit for all those other paintings from every other student that's ever come to _learn_ from you." 

"So you decided to take it back," Madarame sneers. "Is that it? Steal the painting, replace it with an inferior work, to make a fool of me--"

" _I did not steal anything because it was mine in the first place_ _!"_

(...yes, technically, it had been a theft. But on a deeper level, because the painting _had been his own_ , Yusuke is convinced that he had merely taken back what was his to begin with)

"So that's how you feel," his sensei says.

" _Yes_ ," Yusuke says.

"I suppose that delinquent friend of yours put you up to it."

"Akira had nothing to do with it," Yusuke says. 

"So it was only you," Madarame says. "Alone. Is that it?"

"Yes."

There's a long silence, and Yusuke realizes that he has no idea whatsoever what his sensei is going to say now.

"I don't want to disrupt the exhibit," Madarame says, at last. "So you have until June fifth to make whatever arrangements you can. But when it's over, I _will_ be reporting you to the proper authorities. And at that point you will no longer be welcome under this roof."

...well, this is more of a reaction than he had been expecting.

(He wonders, with Akira being so completely clear of suspicion in this case, whether it's possible for his friend's trouble to have temporarily attached itself to him)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many things I want to say about this chapter xD The seeds that were planted back in forewarned with the gardening are finally bearing fruit with an early Haru introduction! The Phantom Thieves have attempted a real world heist, with... mixed results! Futaba is trying to find out more about Lavenza, and is now 100% convinced Akira is carrying a torch for her. Akira is finally talking to Dojima and Nanako again! Futaba is ALSO talking to Nanako, which I have been waiting to do for ages. Yusuke is going to be kicked to the curb soon, so looks they better get moving on that Palace pretty soon!
> 
> Just... so many things I was excited about happening in this chapter. Soooooo many things lol.


	13. May 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two quick notes: 
> 
> 1) I went back to the previous chapter and added a couple sentences just to clarify that Akira started a confidant/bond with Haru. I left it out last chapter because I thought it would be confusing to suddenly have it in, especially when it hasn't been explicitly stated when he started confidants with Morgana/Ann/Ryuji/etc., but it seems to have had the opposite of the intended effect.
> 
> 2) If you're wondering how the Shadow Operatives and Mitsuru got themselves involved in this verse, that whole story is in Forewarned: Arena, the side story covering Persona 4 Arena and Persona 4 Arena Ultimax

_May 15_

_Morning_

-//-

> **Phantom Thieves**
> 
> **Yusuke** : Would any of you be willing to help me change Sensei's heart before the fifth of June?
> 
> **Yusuke:** Because otherwise I am apparently going to be reported to the police for theft at the end of the exhibit

Akira wakes up the morning after the heist to an unread text message, and then the realization that his best friend is about to be arrested. He stares at the message for a long time without responding, feeling his heart getting heavy in his chest. 

Then, instead of answering in the group chat, he texts Yusuke separately.

> **Yusuke**
> 
> Are you okay?

The answer comes so quickly that Yusuke must have been sitting there staring at his phone too.

> **Yusuke**
> 
> I'm fine for now. Things are tense here, but Sensei is not willing to subject himself to that kind of publicity during the exhibit
> 
> Do you need somewhere to stay? Are you going to be okay where you are?
> 
> Thank you, but I can't imagine your guardian will be happy to have an extra person under his roof
> 
> No, but if things get really bad there's always Dojima. I'm 1,000% sure he'd let you stay if your sensei does anything
> 
> I'm not leaving Tokyo, Akira
> 
> Or the Phantom Thieves
> 
> Then I guess we'd better change his heart fast, right? Before the 5th
> 
> Right

Akira makes a face at his phone. June 5th--his seventeenth birthday, and possibly the _worst_ birthday so far, if they don't get through Madarame's Palace in time. 

"What's wrong?" Morgana mumbles. He'd fallen asleep on Akira's pillow, but has apparently woken up at some point while Akira wasn't paying attention.

"Yusuke's sensei figured out the whole thing with the switched paintings yesterday," Akira says, half rolling and half falling out of bed, and beginning the search for clean clothes. 

" _What_? But we were so careful!"

"So now we need to steal his heart before the end of the exhibit," Akira says, ignoring this interjection. "Come on--I want to see if we can meet up with everyone today and get started on that."

He dresses quickly and goes running downstairs. It's so early that Sojiro isn't even in yet, and Akira forces himself to slow down and think. The rest of the Thieves will probably be sleeping in on their day off, after a (supposedly) successful heist the day before. There's no point rushing out now just to hang around the Palace _waiting_ for everyone. He should wait until everyone else has seen Yusuke's messages. He should at _least_ wait for Futaba to be ready so they can leave together.

Sojiro's going to be all kinds of disapproving if Akira tries to wriggle out of his chores, so--since he has to wait anyway--he starts with the cleaning and sorting that have become his more or less by default.

Sojiro shows up when he's about halfway done, sees Akira's already hard at work, and raises his eyebrows. "You're getting an early start, then," he says.

"I have plans today," Akira tells him. "I wanted to get everything done before I left."

His phone buzzes several times just then, which he assumes means that one of the other Thieves has woken up and seen Yusuke's message in the group chat. 

"Are you taking Futaba?" Sojiro asks.

"Probably," Akira says. "Everyone's meeting up--" Hopefully they will be, because this is a problem that they need to start taking care of _now_ , _today_. "But it all just kind of started coming together, I haven't had a chance to ask her yet."

"Hmm," Sojiro says.

Akira doesn't like _hmm,_ because _hmm_ means that Sojiro is thinking, and he'd really rather not have his guardian wondering what he and Futaba have been doing when they're away from Leblanc. He hasn't asked them yet, but it's a probably inevitable problem, one that gets closer and closer every time he or Futaba makes up some excuse for where they're going during metaverse expeditions, but that doesn't mean Akira's at all _ready_ for it.

But _hmm_ is also not a demand for an explanation, so Akira pretends he hasn't heard anything, and keeps his head down as he finishes up in the café and finally has a chance to take out his phone.

The new messages waiting for him are not in the Phantom Thief chat, as he'd expected, but from Akechi.

Great. Wonderful timing. He's been trying to get in contact with Akechi for days, and _now_ he finally decides to answer.

> **Akechi**
> 
> I'm sorry I haven't been responding to any of your messages
> 
> I have been seeing them
> 
> And I think you're right, we do need to talk. When are you free?
> 
> I'm not exactly sure. Maybe after school one day this week?

Madarame's Palace, and helping Yusuke avoid getting in trouble from his sensei, is the most urgent and time sensitive issue right now, and part of Akira wants to come up with some excuse to blow Akechi off until they're done with the Palace. But on the other hand, figuring out Akechi's motivations and _why_ , exactly, he'd decided to ruin Naoto's life is also very important. Blowing Akechi off now might mean he never gets a chance to talk to him and figure anything out.

> **Akechi**
> 
> I could make Wednesday
> 
> That should work. Do you want to meet in the metaverse or the real world?
> 
> The real world. I'm concerned about running into the Black Mask or anything else dangerous

Fair, Akira decides. Whoever the Black Mask is that had attacked Ryuji in Kamoshida's Palace is a whole _other_ issue that he does not even have the brain space to start worrying about right now, but he also doesn't want to run into him.

He decides the Black Mask is a problem for Future Akira to deal with, and goes back to worrying about Akechi instead.

> **Akechi**
> 
> I know of a place near your school we could get something to eat
> 
> OK
> 
> I'll text you the address

So, that's that. Akira makes a mental note that he has plans with someone that has already betrayed the Phantom Thieves for once, then puts Akechi and his whole deal out of his mind so that he can think of a plan for dealing with Yusuke's sensei.

-//-

_May 15_

_Morning_

-//-

Yu feels at least partially responsible for Naoto losing the opportunity to work in Tokyo, since it had (probably) happened specifically because he'd asked her to help find Akira. So, when she needs someone to help her move, Yu volunteers to take a couple days off class and help take her stuff out of Tokyo.

(He's surprised by how quickly she's able to find new work, until she explains where she's going and who she'll be working with)

(They haven't worked with the Shadow Operatives since the P-1 Tournament incident back in high school, but they do keep in sporadic contact, and apparently Naoto hadn't had any issue convincing the group that she could help)

Helping Naoto move is not as painful as it would have been with probably anyone else. She is efficient, she is organized, and she has the bare minimum of boxes that need to be moved. Apart from the circumstances surrounding her exit from Tokyo, it's _almost_ nice to get the chance to get out of the city and spend some time with a friend. But Naoto has been chased away by a high school student with suspiciously close ties to the police, who also happens to be a Persona-user, and that sours what could have otherwise been a decent road trip.

"There are probably some things we should talk about," Naoto says, once they've finally reached her new apartment. Most of her things are inside but unpacked, and the two of them have stopped for a quick break. "Since I probably won't be able to go back to Tokyo for a while."

Yu winces. "Naoto," he says. "I'm really sorry that--"

"No," she says, interrupting him with a firm shake of her head. "It happened. It's over. If anyone should have seen this coming, it should have been me. There's always been something not quite right about Akechi, and I should have trusted my instincts, instead of trusting him. Instead, I asked him to help with finding Akira, and that must have been what started his interest in all this."

"Probably," Yu agrees. The problem is that they still know nothing about Akechi or his real motivations--Naoto has been too busy with her move to do any real investigating, Akira's friend Futaba hasn't been able to find anything about him online other than the same carefully cultivated profile that anyone could have found. Futaba insists that this is definitely a sign of guilt, because no one could possibly look that clean unless they were trying very hard to hide some dirt, but even she has admitted that she'd need some kind of a lead to know where to look for the truth about him.

So they're stuck, knowing nothing about Akechi that they hadn't known a few days ago, which is that Akechi has connections to the police, and enough influence to ruin Naoto's career. They just don't know _how_ or _why_.

"In any case," Naoto says. "That--"

There's a knock on her apartment door.

Yu looks at Naoto, who looks back at him. 

"Were you expecting anyone?" he asks.

"No," she says. "I barely even know anyone here yet." She goes to the door, looking carefully through the peephole, and relaxes a moment later. 

"Who is it?" Yu asks.

"It's Mitsuru," Naoto says, and opens the door for her.

Yu has seen Mitsuru Kirijo a handful of times, in the years since the Investigation Team and the Shadow Operatives first met each other. It had been an--unusual situation, that meeting. Forced to fight each other, running around in a twisted version of Inaba to try and stop yet another dark plan from consuming the place that Yu still thinks of as home. 

Future meetings had been less chaotic. Mitsuru or one of the other Shadow Operatives would call to check in every once in a while, to make sure that there's nothing new going on that they should be aware of. So far, Yu has been able to say honestly every time that nothing interesting and Shadow-related has happened to anyone.

(Well--except for the time that they'd all had to dance their way to defeating an army of Shadows at Rise's Love meets Bonds festival. He's gone with Rise, after, to explain what had happened as best they could, and it had been... relatively awkward)

(He could have managed to explain without Rise, probably, even though she'd been in the middle of it all and probably understands it the best. But he hadn't been excited about the idea of sitting all alone across a table from Mitsuru and explaining how they'd fought Shadows with _dance_ )

Mitsuru looks as calm and put together as she ever does, which is another way of saying that she looks out of place in the mess that is Naoto's apartment, only halfway through the move-in process. 

"You didn't have to come out here today," Naoto says, after the minimum of polite _hellos_ and _how have you beens_ are over. "I was going to come see you tomorrow."

Mitsuru shakes her head and dismisses this concern with a small hand movement. "You didn't go into much detail about what's happening in Tokyo when we spoke on the phone," she says. "And I didn't want to wait any longer to hear the full story."

Naoto recovers more quickly than Yu does, nodding and gesturing Mitsuru over to the small collection of furniture that's already been unpacked. "We can sit and talk here," she says. "And as long as you're here now, Yu can help with explaining."

"Sure," Yu agrees. He sits with the other two, and between himself and Naoto, they manage to get out the whole explanation of what they've learned about the metaverse and Palaces over the past few weeks. When they're done, Mitsuru's expression has gone distinctly sour.

"I won't lie to either of you," she says. "I don't like the way this sounds."

"It's not ideal," Naoto says. "But so far, honestly, Akira seems like he has a good handle on things."

"I'm... sure he's handling himself," Mitsuru says, with a trace of diplomacy in her tone. Yu remembers the way that Mitsuru and Akira had met during the P-1 Tournament (it had ended with Akira using Belphegor, a Persona sitting on a toilet, to surprise Mitsuru into giving up the advantage in their fight). He keeps his expression still through sheer force of will.

"But," Mitsuru continues. "What I'm mainly concerned about is that it's all taking place in Tokyo."

"Why would that be an issue?" Yu asks. "What's wrong with Tokyo?"

"For the past few years," Mitsuru says. "There have been a series of laws and regulations passed in the city that seem like they were specifically designed to make it difficult for us to operate there."

"Really?" Naoto asks, leaning forward with obvious interest. "I hadn't seen anything like that happening."

"You wouldn't," Mitsuru says. "Not without being very familiar with the way we operate. But there are new financial regulations that have prevented us from easily moving funds around the city, laws preventing the police from asking or receiving assistance from certain types of groups--they're mostly small things, but apparently designed specifically to make it difficult for the Shadow Operatives to work within Tokyo."

"So someone that knows how you work has been doing this?" Yu asks. "How many people are actually familiar with what you do?"

"We do collaborate with the police when necessary," Mitsuru says. "Even if most of that collaboration is never made public. There are ways for people outside the group to be familiar with that. A member of the police force. A politician on the right committees. And _someone_ has decided that they want to keep us far away from Tokyo."

"You have no idea who might have an interest in your group?" Naoto asks.

"No," Mitsuru says. "The laws have been proposed by several different people, which either means that one person is working very hard to insert their agenda into laws proposed by others, or that there's a whole conspiracy working together."

"I'm not sure which sounds worse," Yu admits.

"Neither are any of us," Mitsuru says. "But we've decided to stay out of Tokyo until we know who exactly is so set against us."

"Well that's something I'll definitely need to tell Akira about when I get back to Tokyo," Yu says, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his hands over his eyes.

Almost grudgingly, Mitsuru says, "Whatever's going on in the city, it's... probably a good thing that he's the one that's right in the middle of it."

Yu looks back at her, surprised. He _agrees_ , of course, but he'd been half afraid that as soon as Mitsuru found out about Palaces, she'd be sending her Shadow Operatives into the city to take over.

"He was already a fairly strong fighter four years ago," Mitsuru says.

He'd beaten her in a fight, Yu interprets this to mean. 

"And he does seem to have a way of getting around rules he doesn't like," Mitsuru adds. "That was useful during the P-1 Tournament, and I'm sure it'll be useful in these circumstances, too."

Yu relaxes. "I agree," he says. 

"So we'll leave him to take the lead on whatever is going on with these... Palaces," Mitsuru says. "Unless and until he needs help. In the meantime, we'll see if there's anything else we can find out about who's trying to keep us out of Tokyo. It hasn't been a very urgent worry so far, but now that we know there's something important happening there..."

"Are you aware of anyone in Tokyo that has a particular interest in what you do?" Naoto asks. "Or in Persona or Shadows?"

"Akechi," Yu points out.

"I'm not ruling out the possibility that he's connected to the overall plot," Naoto says. "But no single high school student would be able to organize something on this scale without help."

"No," Mitsuru says. "There's no one we're aware of in Tokyo that has any particular interest in Persona or Shadows." She hesitates, then adds, "Not anymore, in any case."

"Not anymore?" Naoto echoes.

Mitsuru shakes her head. "There is someone in Tokyo that we were keeping an eye on for a while," she says. "A researcher who managed to independently get _very_ close to discovering Shadows and Persona purely through theoretical research. And--come to think of it, her research describes something that sounds very similar to these Palaces as well."

"That sounds like it would be _very_ relevant," Naoto says. "If there's some kind of antagonistic motive behind this research, and if she has influential sponsors, or other people interested in her work--"

"Except that she's been dead for two years," Mitsuru says.

"Oh," Yu says.

"Still," Naoto says thoughtfully. "It's possible someone could have continued the research afterward. It's worth looking into."

The conversation continues for a while after that, but Yu excuses himself before too much longer. 

He has a train to catch.

-//-

_May 15_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Instead of taking a train straight back to Tokyo after he's done helping Naoto move, Yu looks up the route to Inaba on his phone, checks with his uncle that he'll be a welcome visitor, and heads there. His trip out of the city to help Naoto move has already taken him halfway there, he's been meaning to get out to see his uncle anyway, and this is probably as good a time as any.

He's not expecting anyone to meet him at the station, and nobody does. He takes the familiar route to the Dojima house on foot, and finds Nanako waiting for him in the garden when he gets there.

She's getting tall, he can't help but notice, in the few moments he has before his cousin sees him. She's eleven now, the same age that Akira had been when he first came to stay. She's in her last year of elementary school, and will be going on to middle school next year.

Briefly, Yu feels _old_.

Then Nanako spots him, and her face lights up. "Yu!" she calls.

"Hey, Nanako!"

She tiptoes her way out of the garden, careful not to step on whatever it is she's growing, then breaks into a run as she dashes out to the street to wrap him in an enthusiastic hug. Yu returns it without hesitation--he hasn't been home (hasn't been back to _Inaba_ ) in way too long.

"Dad said you called and told him you were coming," she says, when the hug ends. "Did something happen? Is everything okay?"

"Nothing new," he tells her. "But I helped Naoto move, and since I was out in this area anyway, I wanted to come visit. Maybe pick up some of Akira's stuff to bring to him."

"Oh yeah," Nanako says. "He had to leave everything here. Dad tried to talk to someone and see if they could send some stuff out to him, but I guess they told him no."

Figures, Yu thinks, as they head into the house. Absolutely everything about Akira's parole has been grossly and intentionally unfair. Why not this?

While Nanako goes to change her clothes and wash the garden dirt off her hands, Yu waits in the kitchen, looking around at the familiar sights of the house where he'd spent the most important year of his life. 

It's not exactly the same as it had been five years ago. The old TV has been replaced with one that's big enough for TV World excursions, when necessary. The old couch had given up the ghost a few months ago, too, so that's gone. There's a bag of cat food leaning up against the kitchen counter, and Shadow herself is asleep on top of the refrigerator. 

But it's the same house, with the same familiar smells, and Yu feels a sudden wave of homesickness well up in his chest. For a stupid second, he wishes he could step back in time to his second year of high school. Maybe it's just the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia, but it feels like everything had been so much easier back then. Even when the Investigation Team had been at its most lost and confused, their next steps had never been in doubt. Watch the Midnight Channel. See if someone new appeared. Investigate to see if they disappeared from the real world, and then go into the TV to rescue them. Look for clues. Take one step closer to the truth, and then another.

And Akira? Yu remembers... he remembers how Akira used to curl up on the couch in their room and hide when he was upset. He remembers that he used to be able to help him just by being there, to help him feel better by holding him while he cried. That had been easier, too. He doesn't know how to _start_ with helping him now, with the Phantom Thieves and Mementos, or with his arrest and probation.

"I'm ready!" Nanako calls from upstairs. "Yu, are you coming?"

He shakes himself out of his thoughts. "Coming, Nanako!" he shouts, and heads up to Akira's bedroom, where she's already waiting.

The bedroom has changed more than the downstairs has, in the past five years. It had been Yu's and Akira's bedroom for a year, but then Akira's alone for the four years after that. His TV World equipment--his _metaverse_ equipment--is stacked up on the desk and next to the bed. There's an old homework assignment sitting on the couch that Akira had presumably never gotten the chance to turn in because of his arrest. Yu pauses and looks down at it. Math, it looks like. Judging by the amount of crossings out and erasing, he hadn't been having a good time with it.

"What are you going to bring back for Akira?" Nanako asks.

"Hmm?" He leaves the assignment where it is and looks around the rest of the room. "Just the necessities, I think. Clothes, weapons. You know."

Nanako nods, and she goes to look through Akira's clothes while Yu sorts the metaverse equipment.

"So how's Inaba been?" he asks her, to make conversation while they work.

She doesn't answer right away.

"Nanako?" Yu prompts.

"Oh," she says. "It's fine. Good. Everything's good."

Yu looks over his shoulder at her, surprised by the complete lack of enthusiasm in her tone. "It doesn't sound like everything's good," he says. "What's wrong, Nanako?"

"Nothing."

"Nanako."

She's suddenly very interested in Akira's sock drawer.

Yu puts down a set of daggers and goes over to put his hand on his cousin's shoulders. He turns her gently around so that they're looking at each other. Yu watches her face, and she stares at his feet. "Something is obviously bothering you," he tells her. "You know you can talk to me."

She looks up at him. Then back down again. "My problems aren't as important as everyone else's problems," she says. "I'm not fighting Shadows or anything like that, I can just... take care of it all myself."

"Nanako--"

"It's not a big deal! It's fine, I don't want to worry anyone about it. I mean, Akira got _arrested_ , and now you guys are in Tokyo, and Akira's been texting me about that Phantom Thief stuff, and Dad told me what you told _him_ about Naoto, and--and my problems are stupid."

Yu knows, because they are his family and he cares about them and he likes to know what's going on in their lives, that Akira is the person Nanako usually goes to with problems. Now that he's gone, Yu wonders if there's anyone else that Nanako's been able to talk to.

(He knows she hasn't been talking to him, and looking at the way she's not evenlooking at him, he wishes he'd thought to check in on her sooner)

So Yu takes her over to the couch, sets Akira's homework off to one side, and waits until Nanako is sitting next to him before he says, "Nanako, I don't care how big or small your problem is. I don't care whether you robbed a bank, or if you have a crush on someone at school and haven't been able to talk about it. The only thing I care about is that you _tell_ me."

She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, then rests her hands in her lap, fingers laced together. "I'm--just lonely," she says quietly. "I miss Akira. I miss you. Dad's trying to figure out how to get custody of Akira back--or I guess get custody for the _first_ time--and he's been meeting with a lawyer to try and find a way to do it, but the probation's making everything hard, and I think he's less convinced now than he was on the day Akira was arrested that it's going to work."

Her fingers on her lap are completely still. If she'd been anyone else, Yu thinks she would have been twisting her fingers, wringing her hands, _something_. But Nanako had been through harder things when she was six years old than most people see in their whole lives, and her hands don't move where they rest in her lap.

"I'm scared that Akira won't ever be able to come home," she says. "You know I love you, Yu, but--Akira stayed. He belongs _here_ , he's a part of the family and I want him to come _home_."

"I know," Yu says. "I get it." And he does, because Akira's been a constant presence in this family for five years. He's doing okay for himself in Tokyo, all things considered, but this is where his family is.

And if he's had his family torn away from him, then his family has also had _him_ torn away from _them_.

"He's going to come home," Yu says.

"I don't know anymore," Nanako says. "I want to believe he will, but even Akira doesn't sound like he's sure."

"Have some faith in him," Yu tells Nanako. "He just stole the heart of his school's volleyball coach, and I'm pretty sure it's not going to be the last one. He's going to figure out a way to come home. And if he doesn't, that's why he has us. So we can help him figure it out."

"Yeah," Nanako says. "I think you're probably right."

"Definitely right," Yu says.

Nanako sighs and leans back a little on the couch. Her posture is more relaxed, and that's good.

"Do you know what it's like?" she asks. "I mean--the place Akira's living now?"

"No," Yu says. "I haven't been there, because of the probation."

"You're not curious?" she says.

He is, a little. Especially now that he's sitting here in Akira's bedroom, and it's so easy to want to compare this place to wherever he's sleeping now. "I do know the name of it," he says, fishing out his phone. "Hang on, I'll look it up."

"You know the name?" Nanako echoes. "Not the address?"

"It's a coffee shop," Yu says. "He told me about it the first time we met up, just in case."

He opens maps and types in _Yongenjaya Leblanc_ (Nanako immediately recognizes the name from the Arsene Lupin books) and waits for the results to load. Inaba has never had the fastest internet, but eventually it loads up, and Yu tilts his phone so Nanako can see the street view image on the screen.

"That looks nice," Nanako admits, and Yu nods. He doesn't know exactly what he'd been expecting when Akira told him that he was sleeping over a cafe, but this does actually look nice. Not _fancy_ nice, but homey nice. 

"I can imagine Akira there," Nanako says.

"So can I," Yu says. "Not as easily as I can imagine him _here_ , but I think he'd fit in."

"It doesn't look Tokyo," Nanako says.

"You haven't seen very much of it," Yu points out. "It's not all skyscrapers and big, shiny buildings."

"Good," Nanako says. "I think that's the part Akira's never really liked."

She gets up, heading back to where she'd been sorting through Akira's clothes.

"Nanako," Yu says.

"Yeah?"

"Are you ready to tell me what's bothering you now?"

For a second she goes very still again. Then she says, "I just did."

Except that he knows her better than that. "No," Yu says. "There's still something."

Nanako bites her lip, and then shakes her head. "I just really don't want to talk about it, Yu," she says. "Is that okay?"

"I wish you would," he says. "I think you'd be a lot less worried if you weren't keeping it to yourself."

"No," Nanako says. "I'm sorry, I know you're just worried but--I'll be okay.."

"Nanako--"

"Do you think Akira will need clothes for when it gets cold?" Nanako asks. "I know it's May, but his probation's going to last all year, and maybe it's better to think ahead and make sure he has everything he needs before he needs it."

Yu bites back a sigh. He's not going to hold Nanako hostage and force her to tell him what's bothering her, but it's bothering _him_ that she's keeping it bottled up inside. He lets the conversation move on for now, and makes a mental note to talk to both his uncle and Akira about the fact that there's obviously going on with Nanako.

"I don't think we need to worry about anything cold weather yet," he tells her. "I can always come back again if he needs anything else."

"Good point," Nanako says. "Okay, yeah, so we won't worry about that..."

She trails off, talking mostly to herself, and Yu continues to worry about her _._

_-//-_

_May 15_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Because Ryuji sleeps in late (so late, in fact, that Akira is genuinely considering going to his place and ringing the doorbell until he wakes up), the Phantom Thieves don't actually meet up at Madarame's Palace until close to 1:30.

Akira, Futaba, and Morgana take the train to Shibuya together, where they meet up with Ann coming up from the underground mall. Ryuji's not there yet, so all four of them hang around the platform together, catching him as soon as he steps off the train.

"Uh," Ryuji says when he sees Akira's face. "Sorry I'm late."

"He's been grumpy all morning," Futaba says. "It's not you, it's him."

Akira takes a deep breath, tries to hide his expression of worry and irritation, and says, "Sorry, Ryuji. I just want to get over there as soon as we can." He's annoyed at Ryuji for not being ready earlier, but he also recognizes that it's unreasonable for him to be annoyed, it's not like Ryuji _knew_ Madarame was going to start threatening to kick Yusuke out on the street, and he's absolutely entitled to sleep in on a Sunday if he wants to.

But he hates standing around and not being able to do anything.

"I get it," Ryuji says. "I didn't expect Madarame would be so pissed off about the heist." They happen to be passing an advertisement for Madarame's exhibition at that point, and Ryuji pauses to scowl at it. "We have to do something about that."

He's so honestly angry on Yusuke's behalf that Akira can't even keep up being irritated about how late he'd slept in. The annoyance that he's been fighting fades into determination. "Right," he says. "Okay. Let's... we should get going."

"We're not waiting for Yusuke?" Ann asks.

Akira shakes his head no. "Madarame's Palace is at his atelier. It'll be easier for Yusuke to enter from inside, since he lives there, instead of leaving and coming back. We'll text him when we're about to enter, and he'll meet us."

"Apparently he and Madarame have been fighting," Morgana says, popping out of Akira's bag and sticking his head over his shoulder. "So he wants to avoid running into him on the way out."

"Poor Yusuke," Ann says with a sigh. "So do we know anything about his Palace?"

Akira gestures for them all to start walking, and they make their way up to ground level. "Not much yet," he says. "Yusuke looked him up way back when the me and him and Futaba were going through her Palace, but none of us has had time to go in and check it out."

"But that was weeks ago," Ryuji says. "Right?"

"Well Futaba'sPalace was priority first," Akira says. "And then everything happened with meeting you guys, and Kamoshida's Palace, and then Akechi--" He sighs. "Anyway. There were other things that were a bigger priority, you know?"

"Not anymore," Futaba says.

"Yeah," Akira says. "No kidding." He looks over his shoulder as they get to the street. "We can all agree that this is what we focus on next, right? Madarame's Palace and helping Yusuke before we do any other Palace?"

"Definitely," Ryuji says.

"100% agree," Futaba says.

Morgana meows a loud _yes_ , and Ann's agreement is cut off by a giggle she quickly hides behind her hand.

They walk until Akira thinks they're close enough to get into the Palace, then jerks his head to the side of the street, where the space between two buildings gives them some cover. "We can go in from here," he says. "We'll use my phone, since I already know the keywords."

"I'll text Yusuke," Futaba says, burying her face in her phone.

As soon as they're out of sight, he hits the button to begin navigation, leading the team into the new Palace.

The metaverse solidifies around him, and Akira takes a second or two just to take in the surroundings. It's dark here, even though it had been the middle of the afternoon in real world Tokyo, and there's a shining, golden monstrosity of a museum on the other side of a street crowded with cognition-people. 

"Well that's... gaudy," Ann says from a step or two behind Akira.

"And well guarded," Morgana adds. "See, over there?" Akira looks down at him, then at where he's pointing. Sure enough, there's a small crowd of Shadows near the museum's main entrance.

"How powerful are they?" he asks. "Oracle?"

"Checking now!" she says, and there's a brief pause as she summons Necronomicon and takes in whatever information she can about the Shadows across the street. 

Yusuke arrives while the rest of the group is waiting for her answer, and makes a noise of disgruntled disgust at the sight of the museum.

"They're definitely more powerful than anything we saw in Kamoshida's Palace," Futaba announces at last. "Except for Kamoshida's actual Shadow, that was definitely way more powerful than these guys."

"Are they more or less powerful than the Shadows in your Pyramid?" Akira asks.

"I didn't get a chance to scan too many of them," Futaba says. "Since I didn't have my Persona until the end. But I don't _think_ these guys are as powerful as they were."

"That's good," Akira says, brightening slightly. He and Yusuke had been able to get through the Pyramid on their own, even if that had involved a lot of running and hiding. He looks across the street at the Shadows again. There's a _bunch_ of them there, and he is deeply against the idea of getting into a big fight at the first opportunity this early in the process. Especially when there might be a less obvious way in. He's also concerned about the idea of raising the alarm level here at the first obstacle, and making things harder for them later in the Palace. "Okay," he says. "So--I think we should head around the outside of the Palace and check for any other way in. If we find it, great, we'll use that. If not, we might have to fight."

"I'd rather avoid that if we can," Ann says, casting a nervous glance toward the Shadows. "You and Fox might not have a problem with these Shadows, but Mona, Skull and I probably will."

"Not too much," Akira says. "I think you guys are getting better."

Ann looks skeptical, so Akira grins at her. "I'm serious," he says. "We have more experience, but you're going to _get_ experience. You'll be fine. Honestly."

"And," Futaba adds. "If we run into anything too bad, Joker and Fox can still bail you guys out."

"We won't need it," Ryuji says. "Come on, let's get going already!"

"Shh!" Ann hisses. "Skull!"

"Let's go heist this guy!" Ryuji says, ignoring her completely. "Again!"

They eventually manage to find a way into the museum by going up over a wall, which is good. There's a series of artistically placed pillars through the open garden space between the wall and the building that they're able to jump across. Also good. Then they drop down into the museum itself (which is as gaudy and unpleasant as the outside had been) and stumble almost immediately onto Madarame's Shadow.

Which is bad.

Akira really should have spotted the Shadow before the Shadow spots them, but there's a lot to take in from those first early rooms of the museum. There are lasers to be jumped over or ducked under, a series of paintings of Madarame's past pupils (Yusuke names the first few of them, but his expression behind his mask gets darker and darker with each new painting they see, and after a while he stops altogether). There's a horrible, golden statue of faceless students being ground down into Madarame's inspiration.

And next to the statue is the Shadow.

Yusuke spots him first, and goes stiff immediately. Akira sees _that_ , follows Yusuke's gaze, and bites back a curse. He'd really been hoping to avoid a confrontation with anything wearing Madarame's face, but it looks like it's too late now to avoid that.

"So the thieves came back," the Shadow says. "I should have known that one painting wouldn't be enough. You've come back to take more of my assets away from me."

Yusuke makes a pained choking sound and takes several steps forward. "That painting was mine in the first place, Sensei," he says.

"Fox," Akira says quietly. Yusuke glances back at him, just for a second, before Madarame's Shadow starts speaking again and both of them look back at him. 

"That painting belonged to me," Shadow Madarame says dismissively. "Because it was painted by you, and _you_ belong to me."

"Oh geeze," Ryuji mutters. "This guy."

"I do not _belong_ to you," Yusuke says. "And neither does my art!"

"You know nothing about the true meaning of art," Shadow Madarame says dismissively. "It's all about transaction--about money, and power."

"If that's what you believe," Yusuke says. "Then _you_ are the one that knows nothing about art."

Futaba tiptoes up behind Akira, poking at his elbow to get his attention. "Joker," she whispers. "Joker, we _really_ don't want to get into a fight with him right now, he's definitely more powerful than Kamoshida's Shadow was."

The Shadow makes a deep, angry noise, and Akira decides that this has probably gone far enough, and that Yusuke has had a chance to say what he needs to say but Futaba's probably right and an immediate fight would be _bad_. They'd run through a lot of healing items with Kamoshida's Shadow, and there hasn't been a chance to restock. 

"Got it," he whispers back to Futaba, and then he steps forward to put his hand on Yusuke's shoulder. "Fox," he says, raising his voice only a very small amount, so that hopefully Madarame won't overhear him. Long experience has taught him that basically nothing he ever says makes Madarame _less_ pissed off. "I understand why you're upset, but we can't get into a fight this soon. We don't know anything about the Palace yet, we don't know where the Treasure is."

"I know," Yusuke says, after a long (too long pause). "But Joker, _the things he is saying."_

"We just need to--"

" _You_ ," Madarame says suddenly, and Akira looks up to see that the Shadow is now glaring straight at him.

"Oh no," he mutters.

"I don't know how many times I have to tell you to _stay away_ ," the Shadow says, and something seems to change in the atmosphere, the air getting heavier and more charged. "I don't know how many times, _but this is the last one_."

"The alarm level just went way, way up, guys!" Futaba says, voice rising in fear. 

"No kidding!" Morgana says. "We have to get out of here, now!"

Ryuji curses. Akira grabs Yusuke and gets them both running. Behind them comes the sound of pursuing Shadows and a blaring alarm. Back out of the museum, around the lasers, over the pillars in the garden again, and out over the outer wall to where they can use the metanav to get back to the real world.

They tumble back out onto the street, and for several seconds they all just sit there, panting and not looking at each other. 

Akira's not looking at anyone, anyway. He's staring at his shoes, trying to process what has just happened. Finally, he pushes his glasses farther up on his nose and forces himself to look around at the others. Yusuke's not there, he can't help noticing--probably since he'd come into the Palace from inside the atelier, he'd gone back there when they exited.

"So," he says carefully. "That--didn't go the way I was hoping it would."

"No kidding," Ryuji says. "We didn't see the alarm level do anything like that when we were in Kamoshida's Palace. What happened?"

"The Shadow saw Akira," Morgana says slowly. "And then the alarm level went--"

"Yeah," Akira says. "I think... well, we know that the way a person thinks influences the way their Palace works, and... and maybe I should have thought about the fact that Madarame really, _really_ hates me."

Another several seconds of silence. 

"Yeah," Futaba says. "That seems like something we should have thought about earlier."

"I'm really sorry, guys," Akira says. "I honestly didn't think something like that could screw everything up so badly."

He stands up, resisting the urge to start pacing. The other Thieves stand as well, some more quickly than others, but eventually they're all up on their feet. Morgana, hopping onto a low wall so that he'll be closer to eye level with the rest of them, says, "This might not be as bad as it seems, actually. We know we have to be careful now, so we _will_ be careful from now on. If the alarm level went up because Madarame's Shadow saw Akira, then all we have to do is make sure Madarame's Shadow doesn't see Akira again."

"That's true," Ann says. "And we're supposed to be Thieves, right?"

"Right," Ryuji says. "We can handle a little bit of sneaking around!"

The rest of the Thieves shush him.

"Okay," Akira says. He feels--awful, honestly. They need to help Yusuke, and because of him, that's just gotten a whole lot harder to do. "Thanks, guys. For--you know. Trying to make this seem like it's not a disaster. I'll think things over too. Morgana, maybe you can show me how to make some of those tools you've been talking about?"

"Stealthanol," Morgana says firmly. "Lots and lots of Stealthanol."

It's not a plan, exactly, but the combination of his friends' encouragement and the promise of ways to get the alarm level back down encourages Akira. "Okay," he says. "So we'll work on that tonight, and we can give the Palace another try tomorrow after school, right?" He waits for everyone else's nods, and then fishes his phone out of his pocket. There's already a bunch of texts from Yusuke in the group chat. "I'll let him know what's going on, and, uh..." Apologize.

-//-

> **Yusuke**
> 
> I'm really, really sorry
> 
> For what?
> 
> If Madarame didn't hate me so much, this Palace would be way easier
> 
> It's not your fault he hates you
> 
> I don't know
> 
> Maybe, maybe not, but if he didn't hate me, it would still be easier
> 
> Akira
> 
> This is Sensei's fault and no one else's

-//-

_May 15_

_Evening_

-//-

Yu hangs out with Nanako for most of the day, then heads out a little after six. He's been keeping the Investigation Team as up to date as possible of the situation in Tokyo, but with three of them still living in Inaba, this feels like a good chance to meet up and explain some things in person.

Yosuke and Chie are both away at college, nowhere close to home, and will have to make do with text updates for the time being. But Kanji and Yukiko are still in Inaba, both of them helping with their respective family's businesses. Yukiko is handling a lot of the day to day management of the inn by this point, while Kanji is mostly working behind the scenes of the textile shop while his mom handles the customer interaction. 

Teddie has more or less defaulted into staying at Junes, which had caused some worry among the rest of the Team at first, as they started to leave high school and move into college or jobs (because what does a half-human/half-shadow do with a life in the real world?). But Teddie has found a way to make it work, somehow. He's friendly and he's good with people. He's grown up a little (to everyone's relief, because they hadn't been sure for a while), and even if he _does_ still look a little younger than the rest of them, he's also started to mature. Slightly. He is still Teddie, after all. But he's actually doing pretty well for himself, working at Junes, helping to train new hires with all the close to unbearable enthusiasm that is typical for him. 

The four of them meet at the Junes food court, because where else would the Investigation Team meet?

"It seems way too empty here," Kanji grumbles as he takes his usual seat at the table. They're all in their usual places, actually, spaced out around the table as if part of them is still expecting the rest of the group to show up and fill in the empty space. 

(The shrine fox, the one that always used to accompany them into the TV World, shows up too, curling up on one of the empty chairs and snoozing through the conversation)

(She's older now, looking gray and stiff, but Yu feels oddly touched that she'd somehow known to show up)

Those empty seats aren't going to be filled today, though, and after a second or two of hesitation, Yu gestures everyone to come in closer. "It is a little empty," he agrees. "And one of these days we'll all have to meet up again, but for right now I thought we should all talk while we can."

He explains everything that's happened over the past couple months, in as much detail as he's been able to learn and remember. The others make no attempt at listening quietly, interrupting so often that Yu finds himself spending as much time answering questions as telling the story. 

When he finally finishes, Yukiko is the first one to comment. "Well," she says. "If we hadn't been in the TV World before, I would have said that all sounded crazy."

"Sounds a little crazy anyway," Kanji says.

"A little," Yu has to admit. "But I mean, that's Akira for you."

"They really use an _app_ to get into the metaverse?" Yukiko asks.

"Yeah," Yu says. "Here, look." He pulls out his phone and swipes over to the metanav, opening it up before laying the phone flat on the table for everyone else to see.

"Beary interesting," Teddie says thoughtfully, as he leans halfway across the table for a better look.

(The pun does not generate so much as a single batted eye from the other three--they've just known him too long by now)

Teddie looks up at Yu. "Do you think it would work here?"

"Ooh," Yukiko says. "Yes--can we see see what these Palaces look like?"

"I don't know if the app would work away from Tokyo," Yu says. "And even if it does, we'd need the name of someone local that's distorted enough to generate a Palace."

"I can think of a couple jerks in town," Kanji says. "We could give them a try."

"Or we could try guessing locations," Yukiko says. "That's what you need, right? The person, the place, and the distortion?"

"Right," Yu agrees. "If you want to sit there and guess, be my guest."

They take him up on this offer with enthusiasm. Yu is a little too out of date on Inaba gossip to be able to participate much, but the rest of them have some ideas to try. They spend close to twenty minutes naming random people and places before Yu shakes his head.

Kanji and Yukiko give up on the app, looking up at him. Teddie keeps going, but Yu tunes him out. "I think if the app could pick up on Palaces here," he says. "We'd have found one by now."

"That's probably true," Yukiko says. "Although I guess it's a good thing that we haven't been able to find any Palaces here."

"That's true," Yu says. "And anyway, it probably only picks up on places in Tokyo, like I s--"

_Match detected._

He shuts up, and looks at Teddie, who is now holding his phone and looking down at the screen with enthusiastic interest.

"What did you just say?" Yu asks, reaching for the app and checking on the screen. Underneath the entry for mementos is a new, half finished entry for a Palace at Inaba's only elementary school.

"Oh," Yu says. "Well that--isn't great."

"No," Yukiko says quietly. "That means there's someone at the school that thinks of it as something else, right?"

"Someone," Yu agrees. "But no way to tell who." He looks over at Teddie. "Did you have someone in mind when you guessed that?" he asks.

"No," Teddie says. "I was just naming every place I could think of, and that was the one that worked."

"It could be anyone," Kanji says. "A teacher, or some kid."

"Or a parent," Yu adds. "Maybe even someone that's already graduated and has bad memories." And the distortion would be even _harder_ to guess without any hints. They try for a while anyway, but this time their random guessing doesn't get them anywhere, and after a while even Teddie admits defeat. 

Yu sighs and takes his phone back. "I'm staying with my uncle tonight and taking the train back to Tokyo in the morning," he says. "I'll find some time to talk to Nanako before then. She's still at school there, she might have some idea who would have a distortion based on it."

"Oh yeah," Kanji says. "She'll know if anyone does."

It's getting late now, and this seems like as good a point as any to wrap up the conversation and head home for the day. Teddie points out that the food court is closing in a few minutes anyway, and they start to stand up and head out.

"Will you let us know if you find anything out?" Yukiko asks.

"Of course," Yu says. "You'll all be the first to know."

He heads home--back to the Dojima's--lost in thought. He's halfway there when his phone pings with a text from Akira.

> **Akira**
> 
> So we had the worst Palace trip ever today
> 
> Is everyone okay?
> 
> Everyone's fine
> 
> But we went into Madarame's Palace and found out that since he hates me, I can't move around in there too much without raising the alarm level
> 
> So, you know
> 
> Yay
> 
> Oh no
> 
> Please tell me you had a better day? I really want to hear that someone's having a good day
> 
> Well I stopped in Inaba on the way back from helping Naoto move in
> 
> Met with Yukiko, Kanji, and Teddie
> 
> Found out there's a Palace centered on the elementary school, but no clue whose it is or what the distortion is
> 
> Oh no
> 
> Yeah
> 
> I really don't want there to be Palaces back home

Yu takes a deep breath. He doesn't really want Palaces here either. It bothers him that the metanav and Palaces and all that are very obviously related to _Akira's_ ability to visit the Velvet Room, and that Inaba is the one place Akira can't go this year. 

-//-

_May 15_

_Evening_

-//-

Nanako helps Yu cook dinner that night, and for a little while things feel almost like they used to when he'd lived in Inaba with them. Except for the fact that Akira's not there, obviously, so really it's not normal at all, but still.

(What would it have even been _like_ , Nanako wonders, if Yu had come to Inaba for the year, and Akira had never been there? It's hard to imagine--she might not even have known about the TV World until she was kidnapped and thrown into it)

Over dinner, they alternate between talking about what's been going on in Inaba, and discussing Akira's probation in Tokyo. And then after dinner, when Nanako's dad has to go to his room for a work call, Yu takes out his phone and shows Nanako the metanav.

"Is that what it looks like?" she asks, taking the phone from him when he offers it. "Akira told me about it, but I didn't think it would look so..." She's flipping through it, and stops suddenly. "...so normal. Why is my school in here?"

"I was going to ask you about that, actually," Yu says. "When I met with everyone at Junes earlier, Teddie was guessing some random places to see if he could get a hit, and that was the only one that came up. We were wondering if you might know anyone at your school that could possibly have a Palace."

"I don't think so," Nanako says. "Akira told me about that volleyball coach at his school, I don't think we have _anyone_ like that." Akira had very carefully edited around the worst things Kamoshida had done when he told her about him, which only meant that she'd had to draw her own conclusions, and then look him up online to find out about the things he was doing to girls at the high school.

(She'd also found a couple more articles about the Phantom Thieves, all of which she'd saved to her phone, _and_ the phan site that Futaba has complained about being apparently not very secure)

(Nanako thinks it's awesome)

"It might not be exactly like that," Yu says. "It could be someone whose way of thinking has been distorted in another way."

"Like what?" Nanako asks.

"I don't know, exactly," Yu says. "That's why I'm asking you if you might know anyone who's been acting..." He trails off with an expansive gesture, and looks at her.

"It could be anyone?" Nanako asks. "A teacher, or--or a student?"

"Or a parent, or the principal. Anyone."

"That doesn't really narrow it down much, Yu."

"I know," he says. "And if you don't know anyone, then that's fine. I just thought I'd ask."

Nanako thinks about this. She thinks about some of the things she's not telling him, and wonders if any of that would be enough of a distortion to _count_ , or if it's just people being people, and sometimes people are mean. 

"Nanako?" he prompts.

"Hmm?"

"Did you think of anyone?"

No. She's already decided she's not going to bother Yu with _that_. She hadn't told him when they'd talked earlier, and she doesn't really want to tell him now.

(She's too ashamed to tell him, maybe)

She shakes her head no. "Sorry," she says. "I don't really know many people at school outside my class."

"Well I guess that's a good thing too," he says. "I didn't want someone terrible bothering you at school."

"Yeah," Nanako says quietly.

(Later, when Yu is in the shower, Nanako sneaks into his room, unlocks his phone--he's used the same password since the year he lived with them, and Akira had figured it out ages ago and then told her--and tries a name on the metanav)

(When the phone announces a match, she stares at it for a little while, and then deletes the whole entry and runs back to her room)

The problem is that she doesn't have a lot of her own friends. She has people at school that she's friendly with, but no one that she can really go to, to talk about something like this. Which is okay, usually! Because _usually_ she would have Akira at home to talk to. Now that she doesn't, she isn't sure what to do. And anyway, this specific problem isn't one that she wants to worry Akira with. Not considering--everything.

There's a message waiting for her on her phone when she next looks at it, and Nanako reads it, hoping for a distraction. It's Futaba, which is not as much of a surprise today as it might have been yesterday or the day before. Nanako doesn't know why someone like Futaba--who is older, and knows apparently everything about computers, and is also a Phantom Thief--would want to keep talking to her.

Futaba's message is a gif from one of the Featherman shows. It's one of the recurring villains, being thrown full force into a building that explodes in full, dramatically-bad-practical-effects fashion.

Nanako giggles and drops into her desk chair.

> **Futaba**
> 
> IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING
> 
> MADARAME PALACE INFILTRATION DAY ONE WENT BADLY
> 
> Oh no :( Akira texted me about it this morning, he said Yusuke's going to get kicked out?
> 
> Not for a little while but
> 
> :/
> 
> You guys will get it though :)

Futaba's answer is to resend the gif from earlier, but twice this time. 

> **Futaba**
> 
> Does this mean your backup plan is to throw someone into Madarame's house and just blow it up?
> 
> :O
> 
> I mean it WASN'T but I think it has to be now
> 
> lol :)
> 
> well I'm here if you need any more Featherman-inspired backup plans

And then somehow the conversation moves from Palaces onto Featherman, and by the time Yu sticks his head in half an hour later to say goodnight, Nanako realizes that she's actually feeling better. Hopefully Futaba is too (although _her_ problems, with the Phantom Thieves and Madarame's Palace and everything, are more worth being upset about than Nanako's are).

It's only very late that night, as she's trying to fall asleep, that it occurs to her to wonder if she might actually be making a friend.

-//-

_May 17_

_Lunchtime_

-//-

They go into the Palace again on Monday, and if anything, things go worse than they had the first time. They get a little farther in, but every single encounter with a Shadow sets the alarm level skyrocketing, which makes it harder to move around undetected afterwards. Akira had done everything he could to keep out of sight, to use what he'd learned sneaking around the TV World, but in the end even that hadn't been enough. The problem is that the higher the alarm goes, the more aggressively the Shadows come looking for them. As soon as they mess up and get spotted by just _one_ Shadow, all the other ones come down on them hard.

The worst part for Akira is when Ann suggests they try fighting a Shadow without Akira around. Just to see if Madarame's Shadow is anti-Akira, specifically, or anti-Phantom Thieves, generally. End result of that experiment is that yes, actually, he really does just hate Akira, specifically, that much, and apparently the rest of the Thieves can fight just fine without raising the alarm level, as long as Akira is nowhere in sight.

He doesn't know how they're going to get through the Palace. Or, more accurately, he has no idea how _he's_ going to get through the Palace, and so he heads to school on Tuesday feeling tired and upset because he's spent the night sitting up worrying about the fact that there's only one way he can think of to get the Thieves to the Treasure.

"I have to sit this one out," he tells Morgana, as he stands on the platform in Shibuya Station, waiting for his train. "If I go in with the rest of you guys, there's no way we'll ever make any progress."

"We won't be able to make enough progress without you," Morgana says. "No one else has multiple Persona, and no one else has as much experience as you."

"It doesn't matter," Akira says. His tone is tired because he's already had this argument with himself several times last night, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling. "The disadvantage of Shadows seeing me and instantly raising the alarm level is bigger than the advantage of my extra Personas and experience." He takes a deep breath. "Anyway, Yusuke's been doing this for a long time, too."

"He only has one Persona," Morgana says.

"And if you really need a Wild Card, you can borrow Yu or something, I'm sure he'd be happy to help."

Morgana makes a disappointed noise. "It just--wouldn't be the same," he mutters.

"I don't think you'll really need him, anyway," Akira says. "Honestly, the couple Shadows we fought yesterday? I _really_ think you guys can handle it."

He's hoping they can, because he's turned this over and over in his mind, and there's no way they're getting through this Palace if he's with the team. "And," he adds. "I can still help after we send the calling card. Last time that set the alarm level pretty much as high as it could go anyway, so it won't matter if I'm there or not."

"But--"

"Just think about it before you argue, please?" he says. "I don't like it either, but we have to get through this somehow, and right now I think that means doing it--you know, without me."

"Fine," Morgana says. "I'll think about it. But only because there has to be a better plan."

"I hope you figure one out," Akira says. "Because I'm not going to lie, I really hate the idea of sitting this out."

His train comes then, saving Akira from any more of that uncomfortable conversation. He's going to have to have it all over again later, with the rest of the Thieves, and he's not looking forward to it.

Maybe that's why--after a morning that feels agonizingly long--Akira decides to head up to the roof for some air on his own. Morgana stays in the classroom, probably for the chance to talk to Ann about Akira's plan for avoiding the rest of the Palace.

He speeds up a little so he won't have to hear whatever the two of them say. He's already feeling guilty enough for not being able to stay with them, even though he's convinced that this is the only way things are going to work at all.

He's almost running by the time he gets to the rooftop, which makes it a little awkward when he pushes open the door and comes face to face with Haru Okumura. 

"Oh!" she says, jumping half a step back. 

"Sorry," Akira says, wincing. "I... wasn't looking where I was going."

She recovers quickly. "No," she says. "It's--no, it's alright. I was hoping to have a chance to talk to you today anyway."

"About the gardening," Akira says, after a brief pause. He has not actually had much time to think about any of that since their first meeting at the exhibition, but--

Well, he's about to have some free time, isn't he? And maybe some decent vegetables would at least do _something_ to help the rest of the Phantom Thieves. Possibly. He's hoping.

"Exactly," Haru says with a smile. "Do you want to sit down and talk?"

He does. They sit in a couple of the abandoned desks that litter the school rooftop. Akira's been up here before, and he remembers the desks being sort of in the middle of the roof then. Now they're pushed off to the side, out of the way of the two planters that Akira's assuming had been set up by Haru. 

"You've been working on it already a little, it looks like," he says.

"Just a little," Haru agrees. "I wanted to clear up some of the weeds and things that started to come in after the gardening club disbanded at the end of last year."

The air up here, this close to the garden plots, smells like dirt and green things, and against all odds, Akira can feel it starting to calm him down a little bit. The smell of a good garden is a smell that reminds him of home, and even if this isn't a _good_ garden yet (it's barely a garden at all), he thinks it can get there.

They talk almost exclusively about plants for the next hour, with only a few tentative steps into anything more personal. Everything that's going on in Akira's life is either weird (the metaverse, the Phantom Thieves, periodically meeting Yu in a viscera covered subway) or awkward to talk about (his arrest and probation). Haru doesn't tell him much about her home life either, and after Akira's first couple attempts at smalltalk end with her redirecting the conversation away from her family, he takes the hint.

So.

They talk about gardening.

Luckily, this is actually something Akira can talk about at length and with a pretty decent level of expertise. What had started out as something Nanako had dragged him into kicking and screaming has turned into an actual hobby. It's kind of nice, actually, to have someone other than Nanako to talk to about it.

Haru doesn't know much (yet), but she's enthusiastic and asks good questions, and it's the most normal conversation Akira has had with anyone in what feels like at least three months. The worry about... generally _everything_ that's going on doesn't go away. It _can't_ , because it's all too big for him to just stop worrying, but--

But it's a nice surprise to find this, in the middle of everything.

"I--have to be somewhere after school, most days," Haru says, when lunch ends, and they both start brushing dirt off their hands, gathering their things, and getting ready to head back to class. "But if you want, we could meet here during lunch, maybe two or three times a week...?"

Akira' first instinct is to say that he hs somewhere that he needs to be after school too, but it doesn't look like that's the case, actually. It looks like, instead of being able to help his friends through Madarame's Palace, he's only going to be a danger to them if he goes in, too. So maybe he doesn't have anywhere to be after school. He just nods instead, and says that meeting up at lunch sounds like a good plan.

She walks with him down to the second year classrooms, then waves goodbye and continues down to the third year classes on the first floor. Akira watches her go, then hurries back to his desk before the start of the next period. Ann gives him a _look_ that makes him wince (obviously she shares Morgana's opinion of his idea for taking a step back from Madarame's Palace), but they don't have a chance to talk before their teacher comes in and calls for quiet. Apparently that's going to be a conversation he can look forward to having the second classes end for the day.

He takes a deep breath, thinks of gardens and vegetables, and thinks he can handle whatever argument is headed his way. He _knows_ that they can handle this. It'll be hard, and slower than if he was with them, but--

(But the alarm level had gotten up to 90% yesterday, and they hadn't even gotten as far as the place where they ran into Madrame's Shadow the first time)

( _Akira is not going to put his friends in that kind of danger_ )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol I was not expecting it would be so much fun to go back to Inaba. I mean, Nanako's definitely not having a good time, but I am :p
> 
> Related to the note at the top of this chapter, about Akira starting a confidant with Haru, the current full list of confidants (plus their arcana and rank) can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pZSVRCF-ziGliXQ1gbkvAm7Rmdyp5F1K/view?usp=sharing 
> 
> Apologies for my terrible handwriting, these are just the notes I made for myself and decided to throw in at the last minute, and I was honestly too lazy to go in and type them up.


	14. May 17-May 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Massive shout-out to the commenters on the last chapter who correctly guessed who the Inaba Palace belongs to, you guys are amazing and observant.
> 
> (Also massive shout-out to people that guessed other characters, or who didn't guess at all! You're all awesome)

_May 17_

_After School_

-//-

The Phantom Thieves--minus Akira--go back into Madarame's Palace after school.

Yusuke is not sure how well this is going to go. He _has_ been through the metaverse on his own before, but only in the TV World. It's a little bit more complicated in Palaces, because there are things like security levels and lasers, and also because everything about this Palace, specifically, is--

It's strangely personal. 

He tries not to think too much about how his sensei's Palace must have been growing for a very long time, to get this big and complicated. 

"So... how far in are we going today?" Ryuji asks, as the five of them stand in a loose huddle near the entrance.

"I guess just far enough to see how well we can handle it," Futaba answers. 

How well they can handle it without Akira, Yusuke knows she means. They'd argued about whether he should come in with them or not, but the hard fact is that they'd tried that yesterday, and it hadn't worked at all. The least they can do is _try_ and see how well things go without him.

So, into the Palace they go. 

And Yusuke hates to admit it, but things _are_ a lot easier without the Shadows raising the alarm over Akira every five minutes. Most of the Shadows they run into are relatively easy to sneak past, and when they do fight, they... manage. Futaba had hung back a lot during their trip to Kamoshida's Palace, still a little nervous about all the new people, and directing most of her comments to Akira. She steps up now, because she needs to, giving them an almost constant stream of reminders and updates about what the Shadows are weak to, how much health they have, everything she can sense with her Persona and they can't.

It might have been annoying, maybe, if it hadn't also been so necessary. Ryuji especially seems to prefer rushing in with a club even when the Shadow is weak to electricity.

So while Futaba steps up to try and cover the gaps in their team without Akira, Yusuke tries to take over for keeping them hidden, and ambushing Shadows. Ann, Ryuji, and Morgana are fighting as hard as they can, to make up for the sudden dip in group strength now that Akira's gone. And they all just--get through it. It's working.

Or at least, it's working until they stumble onto what turns out to be something called a Treasure Demon, which seems to hypnotize Morgana. He goes a little bit _strange_ , staring at it, forgets to stay stealthy, and then suddenly the Thieves are surrounded by walls of lasers.

Ann jumps back, barely dodging a laser, Morgana comes back to himself just in time to scramble out of the way, and Yusuke grabs Futaba by the shoulders and yanks her toward him right before a wall of lasers spring up where she'd been standing.

"Th--thanks, Fox," she says.

He nods at her. Then he realizes he's still holding her shoulders, and lets go, taking an awkward half-step back.

"Lasers," she reminds him, before he can walk into them.

"Oh," he says. "Right." And for something to do, he turns and looks around at the small space they're trapped in, hoping that there might be a way out. Nothing obvious presents itself, though--the lasers reach too high up to be climbed or jumped over, and they're spaced too closely for any of them to squeeze between. Maybe if Morgana was in his cat form, he'd have been able to do it, but not now that he's in his metaverse guise.

"What the fuck, Mona?" Ryuji shouts, and Yusuke's cranes his neck to try and get a look at him--the lasers make for an awkward angle, but from where he's standing, he's pretty sure that Ryuji had actually managed to jump back far enough to avoid the laser trap completely. He perks up slightly. 

"I'm sorry, okay?" Morgana says. "I didn't mean it!"

"Skull," Ann calls, interrupting what looks like it's about to turn into an argument. "Can you just... stop yelling at Mona for a minute and see if you see anything to help get the rest of us out of here?"

"I don't think so," he says, after looking around for a second. 

"Hang on," Futaba says, holding one hand up to her goggles in a gesture of concentration. After a brief pause in which Yusuke assumes she must be scanning the area, she points (carefully, to avoid hitting Yusuke or the lasers) to a spot just behind Ryuji. "I think if you climb up there, you can lower a partition and get to where Ann's stuck."

"Yeah?" Ryuji says, a little skeptically.

"Yeah. But there's a Shadow there. You're on your own so it'd probably be a good idea not to fi--"

She's interrupted by the sound of Ryuji full out _smacking_ the Shadow in the back of the head.

Yusuke looks down at Futaba, whose expression very clearly reads as _why couldn't it have been somebody else that avoided the lasers_. Then she takes a deep breath, and says, in a deceptively calm voice, "Okay, that one's actually strong against electricity, so you need to try hitting it with something else!"

"Like what?" Ryuji calls.

"I don't know," Futaba says. "Maybe you should have thought of that _before you hit it in the face_?"

He elects to hit it in the face again, which at least works, and after that it's just a question of which of them is going to drop first, Ryuji or the Shadow. It's a close thing, and Yusuke's holding his breath by the end, but eventually the Shadow dissolves into nothing, and Ryuji is left to lower the partition separating him from Ann, and clamber around to reach her.

She slaps him.

"Ow!" Ryuji protests. "Panther!"

"Oracle _said_ not to try fighting the Shadow by yourself," Ann lectures him. "And then you went and did it anyway! What do you think would have happened if the Shadow had won? None of the rest of us can get out of here by ourselves!"

"Um," Futaba says, raising her hand slightly. "Panther, not that I don't _agree_ , but if you hit him again, I think you're going to knock him out. He's really close to running out of health."

So instead, Ann just gives him a pointed look, and casts _dia_.

"Thank you," Ryuji says. "And I'm sorry that I--didn't listen. But Mona was the one that got us into this in the first place--"

"I said I was sorry!" Morgana protests.

"It could have been worse," Yusuke says, trying to defuse the situation. "Skull's pretty tough. Not all of us would have been able to make it through a one on one fight with a Shadow." He probably could have, but he's had plenty of practice. Ann or Morgana would have been overwhelmed. And Futaba? She wouldn't have been able to fight at all.

"He's right," Futaba says. "And also, if you guys go back up and around _that_ way--" she gestures to the path she wants them to take. "I think you can get to that painting over there."

"Why that painting?" Ann asks.

"There's a switch behind it that should let me and Fox out," Futaba says.

"What about me?" Morgana asks.

"Um..." Futaba chews on this, while Ann and Ryuji carefully maneuver their way around the lasers and toward the painting she'd indicated. "I think we'll need to find a way to turn the lasers off completely before we can get to you, Mona. Sorry."

The lasers around Yusuke and Futaba flicker out of existence as she says this, as Ann and Ryuji find the button behind the painting. Yusuke takes a few tentative steps forward, and lets out a breath of relief when nothing happens. 

"It's okay," Morgana says. "Just--do you think you could figure out how to do that? I don't like being caged up like this again."

Yusuke hides the wince he doesn't think Morgana will want to see. Of course, this can't be fun for him after his lengthy stint in Kamoshida's dungeons.

"Of course we will, Mona," Ann assures him. "Oracle, any idea where we should look?"

They end up crawling through an air vent and fighting another Shadow (tough but not unmanageable, now that there's three fighters free) before they get to the terminal that will let Morgana out. They all meet up again in the room with the Treasure Demon, none of them quite looking at each other.

Then Morgana says, "Sorry that I... got distracted by that. I should have been thinking more about whether there would be traps."

"Yeah," Ryuji mutters. "But... 's okay. I'm sorry I said it was your fault. And that I went running into a fight with that Shadow by myself."

Ann crosses her arms over her chest. "And I'm sorry for slapping you, Skull. I was just scared that we'd all be trapped here, if you couldn't get to us."

"It all worked out," Yusuke says, as the tension eases. "But... maybe we should head back for the day?"

The others agree, but Futaba holds a hand up before they can take a step. "First," she says. "Can we all agree that we're not going to tell Joker that we screwed up and almost got ourselves trapped in here? Because I think he's going to change his mind about staying out of the Palace if he hears about it, and..." she bites her lip for a second, then continues, " _And_ , I think he's right. We're not going to make it through here if he's with us."

"Probably not," Ann says quietly.

"So this is our team until we get to the Treasure," Yusuke says, looking around at all of them. "And we can do it, right?"

"Right," Morgana says. "I mean--we'll have to."

"We _will_ ," Ryuji says. "We got this."

They head out.

-//-

> **Akira**
> 
> Just wanted to check in and make sure everything went okay?
> 
> Yusuke?
> 
> Didn't the others tell you?
> 
> Yeah, they said everything went fine, but
> 
> Also Morgana started to say something about lasers and then Futaba gave him this LOOK
> 
> So I just wanted to check?
> 
> Everything went fine
> 
> You guys 100% got caught by lasers, didn't you?
> 
> ...possibly slightly
> 
> Ahhhhhh I hate this
> 
> We also got ourselves out of it. We're fine, I promise

-//-

_May 18_

_Afternoon_

-//-

The day after their first excursion into Madarame's Palace without Akira, Futaba spends her day in Leblanc. She's worried about the Palace, if she's being completely and 100% honest with herself. She's worried that maybe they won't be able to get through it without Akira and all his Persona to help them, and she's worried about something happening like the trap from yesterday. She's worried that they could be stuck in a Palace, and no one would ever know what had happened to them, except for Akira, and so of course Akira would try to come in and rescue them if they don't come out, only how is he supposed to manage that if the Shadows are still looking for him--

She distracts herself with talking to Sojiro, scrolling through the phan site, and texting anyone that isn't too busy to answer. Ryuji, of course, never passes up an opportunity to avoid paying attention in class, so the two of them have a lengthy argument about nothing in particular. And Ann always checks out mentally around 11:00, when apparently her and Akira's class has their history lesson (Ann's least favorite subject), so Futaba texts her then to ask how Shiho is doing, and gets the update that she should be out of the hospital by the end of the month. Futaba tries to text Akira, too, but apparently he's actually _trying to pay attention in class_ , so she only gets a few messages back from him. And a picture of something small and green poking out of a bunch of dirt after his lunch break.

She tries to text Nanako too, because sometimes Nanako won't answer at all during the school day but sometimes she apparently skips class (this is Futaba's working theory, anyway), and will respond even in the middle of the day. Today is apparently _not_ one of the class skipping days, though, because Futaba doesn't get anything from Nanako at all.

And then, a little after 2:30, she hears Leblanc's door open, and Futaba half turns with the bare minimum of interested to see who's coming in.

Which makes her _immediately_ reassess her entire idea of why Nanako isn't answering her texts, because that is definitely Nanako Dojima standing in the doorway.

> **Akira**
> 
> AKIRA AKIRA AKIRA
> 
> BIG HUGE EMERGENCY ALERT YOUR SISTER JUST WALKED INTO LEBLANC
> 
> I MEAN SHE'S NOT TECHNICALLY YOUR SISTER BUT YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN
> 
> ANSWER YOUR STUPID PHONE AKIRA

> **Ann**
> 
> ANN, YOU SIT BY AKIRA IN CLASS, RIGHT????
> 
> Yes, why?
> 
> CAN YOU KICK HIM REALLY HARD OR SOMETHING
> 
> AND TELL HIM TO CHECK HIS PHONE

She holds her breath for a couple seconds.

> **Ann**
> 
> He just checked his phone and then made this weird noise 
> 
> Our teacher asked if he's having some kind of attack and needs the nurse
> 
> And he said yes so he should be able to answer whatever you texted him about in a minute, but what is going on?
> 
> His sister that he's not supposed to see while he's on probation just walked in here
> 
> !!!

She turns around, sees Nanako looking small and nervous in one of the booths while Sojiro says something to her, and goes back to her phone

> **Akira**
> 
> What is she doing there??
> 
> I don't know!
> 
> Futaba, she can't be there
> 
> Technically she can't be around YOU, she can still be HERE
> 
> I'll try and talk to her and see what's going on
> 
> Please let me know if something's wrong
> 
> I will. But you need to not come back until we know more and can get her somewhere else
> 
> I won't
> 
> Unless she's in trouble and needs me
> 
> You have that meeting with Akechi after school, right? Just... go meet him and hopefully I'll know more by the time you're done
> 
> ffffffffff
> 
> I can't overemphasize how much I don't want to talk to Akechi right now

"Futaba," Sojiro says, and her head snaps up from staring at her phone to look at him. He beckons her back toward the tiny kitchen area, so she hops off her stool (exchanges a look with Nanako, who is looking back at her with wide eyes) and follows Sojiro to where he obviously wants to talk to her with a little bit of privacy.

"What's up?" she asks, trying hard to sound normal and casual. Does she sound normal and casual? She doesn't think so.

"I think that girl that just came in is a runaway," Sojiro says, keeping his voice low enough that Futaba can only just barely hear him. 

"Why would you think that?" Futaba asks, after a brief pause.

"Because there's no reason for some kid to come wandering in here before schools let out," Sojiro says bluntly. "Especially looking as upset as she does, and with an accent that definitely isn't from around here."

Futaba thinks vaguely that at least Akira only has a very slight accent, even after living for five years in the most backwater town Futaba has ever heard of. She knows he hadn't been born there (while Nanako _had_ ), which in this case is probably a good thing in this case. Otherwise, Sojiro might have been able to figure out they're from the same place, and that wouldn't possibly end well.

"There's just something about this situation that's not sitting right with me," Sojiro says. "I just talked to her for a couple minutes, and..." he sighs and shakes his head, like he's wondering how he gets himself into these situations. "Anyway, I want to talk to her a little more, see if hopefully I'm overreacting. Do you think that you could--"

"Why don't I talk to her instead?" Futaba blurts.

He stops, mid-sentence. His eyebrows go up slightly. "You... want to talk to her?" he asks skeptically.

"Yeah," Futaba says. "I think I can handle that." She gives him a smile that doesn't feel very convincing even on her own face. He has every reason in the world to be skeptical of her suddenly wanting to talk to someone. Even if she has been doing better around people lately, it's mostly been Akira and the friends he's introduced her to. "But--" _But_ she doesn't want Sojiro figuring out why, exactly, Nanako shouldn't be here. "I'll take her up to Akira's room or something. She might be more willing to talk to me, right? Because I'm closer to her age, and everything."

"Alright," he says, watching her face. She wonders if he can tell that she's grasping for any excuse she can think of. "But if you need help, let me know."

Futaba turns and walks over to where Nanako has been very obviously watching the conversation, and hesitates when she gets to the table. "Hi," she says, keeping her voice _very_ quiet. "You're Nanako, right?"

"Yes," Nanako says. "And you're Futaba?"

Futaba nods. This close, she can see what Sojiro had noticed earlier. Nanako looks miserable, like she's been crying, and Futaba has to grudgingly admit that Sojiro has a pretty good reason to think there's something fishy here. "Do you want to go upstairs and talk?" she asks, jerking her head up toward the attic.

"Yes, please," Nanako says.

Futaba tries to look reassuring (judging by Nanako's expression, she's either doing a very bad job, or Nanako is too shaken to be reassured). She takes Nanako up to Akira's attic bedroom, and points her toward Akira's bed before sitting down on the ancient couch, her knees pulled up toward her. "We should be okay to talk up here as long as we don't get too loud," she says, in a volume just under her normal speaking voice. "What are you _doing_ here?"

"I--" Nanako fidgets. "I guess you could say that something happened. I need to talk to Akira."

"But his probation--"

"I _need_ to talk to him!"

"Shh!"

Nanako lowers her voice, but if anything she looks even more upset. "I know that I'm not supposed to be here," she says. "I know, I _know,_ but I..." She takes a deep breath, and Futaba has the definite impression that she's trying to keep her breathing under control to keep herself from crying. "But I came anyway," she says. "I really need to talk to him."

Futaba feels like she's way too under leveled to be having this conversation, but she tries anyway. "I don't know if that's going to work out," she says carefully, feeling like it's the wrong thing to say. "And...he's at school right now anyway. But you can talk to me right now, if you want?"

Nanako looks for a second like she's going to say no, but then she falters, and eventually nods. It's a small, reluctant gesture, but honestly kind of more than Futaba had expected. "Okay," she says. "I--I _really_ wasn't going to say anything to anyone," she says, tone almost defensive. "I thought that I could handle it all by myself, because it wasn't that bad, and--and everyone else has problems that are bigger than mine."

"Did your problem get bigger?" Futaba guesses.

Nanako nods. "Do you have the metanav on your phone?"

"Yes?" Futaba says. It's not the question she'd expected at all. "Why?"

Nanako holds out her hand. "Can I see it?" 

Futaba unlocks her phone and brings it over to Nanako. She hovers nearby as Nanako takes it and says the name of her school. This part at least isn't a huge surprise, since Akira has already told her that Yu and his friends had found a Palace there. But as far as she knows, no one has figured out who the person is that the Palace belongs to, or what the distortion is.

"Do you know something about whose Palace it is?" Futaba asks.

Nanako nods. "It's Ryoko Ishikawa."

_match detected_

The name doesn't mean anything to Futaba, but since she knows the names of a grand total of two people that live in Inaba (one of whom is sitting in front of her now), this doesn't mean much. Futaba's fingers itch to start looking Ryoko Ishikawa up online, but since Nanako's still holding her phone, she can't. "Who is that?" she asks instead.

"My teacher," Nanako says. "And... and also..." She lowers her eyes, suddenly reluctant to look anywhere near Futaba. "Also, has Akira ever talked about the woman he tried to help before he got arrested?"

"No," Futaba says. Although she suddenly feels like she can make a very good guess what her name might be. "He told me once that she was someone he'd seen around town, but didn't really know her."

"Mmm," Nanako says, and taps the side of Futaba's phone with her finger.

"Oh _no_ ," Futaba says.

"I didn't know her before the school year started, either," Nanako says. "But then I got assigned to her class, and she's definitely..." She hesitates. "I don't think I've ever known anyone as _sad_ as she is. Most of the other students don't know exactly what happened to her, but she missed the first couple weeks of class, so people made some stuff up. And the teachers definitely know what happened. They whisper about her a lot, and the only people that know for sure what happened on--on that night are her and Akira and whoever that guy was, so there's a lot of, uh... rumors."

"How do you know what the other teachers are saying?" Futaba asks.

"Because Akira taught me how to listen to people without them realizing I'm paying attention," Nanako says. "He always says that if people think you don't know anything, they'll say all kinds of things around you that they shouldn't."

Checks out, Futaba thinks. That's exactly the kind of life lesson Akira _would_ think was important to pass on to Nanako. Out loud, she asks, "What kind of things are they saying?"

Nanako shrugs uncomfortably. "Well," she says. "A lot of them believe her version of what happened, because her and that guy both said that they were just talking before Akira tried to assault the guy. Only, then Akira said he was trying to--to rape her, so I think what most people think is that she was going to... um. _You_ know. With that guy she'd just met." 

She looks embarrassed.

"But it shouldn't be a big deal if she wanted to sleep with some guy," Futaba says. "Right? I mean, if everyone believes her version of things, about it being consensual."

"Maybe it's not a big deal in Tokyo," Nanako says. "But Inaba isn't a big city, and tradition means a lot, and teachers are supposed to be... not the kind of people that sleep around. So a lot of the other teachers are upset at her because of that. And some of them heard Akira's version of what happened, and _yeah_ he kind of has a reputation for trouble around town, but not everyone thinks he'd actually assault someone. So some of them blame her for getting a kid falsely accused and sent away from home, which is _another_ thing teachers shouldn't really be doing. And then there's all the rumors the other kids are making up, and they don't know anything about anything, so those rumors are just lies and gossip and all over the place..."

She trails off, looking uncertain. The impression Futaba's getting out of all this is that this Ishikawa's life has been turned into a never ending rumor mill since April, which is probably about the worst thing that can happen to someone in a small town like Inaba.

(Apart from, for example, something like being falsely convicted of assault charges)

"So basically Akira wasn't the only one that had his life ruined that night," Futaba summarizes.

"Exactly," Nanako says. "And I would feel sorry for her, except that she... kind of blames Akira for everything."

"Why would she blame _Akira_?" Futaba demands, suddenly outraged on Akira's behalf. "There's no way she thinks he actually assaulted that guy! She was there, she _has_ to know what really happened!"

"I don't know," Nanako says. "But she definitely blames him, and..." She shifts uncomfortably. "And she knows he's basically my brother, and he lived with us for a really long time, so..."

"So..." Futaba tries to guess, when Nanako doesn't look like she's ever going to finish the sentence. "So she takes it out on you?"

Nanako nods. "And I really thought that I could _handle_ it," she says. "I did! Because she wasn't doing anything too bad at first. She would call me out in class a lot, especially if I had the wrong answer or looked like I wasn't paying attention. She said I was cheating when I did good on the first set of exams, and made me retake them, only she used harder questions the second time. And then I did worse, so she said that proved I was cheating. And when I started... I started skipping class sometimes, when I really didn't want to see her, she said I was just a delinquent like Akira, and I was never going to be worth--anything."

"How is that not doing anything too bad?" Futaba asks.

"Because it wasn't as bad as what happened to Akira," Nanako says. "And everything that's going on with him is more important than one teacher being mad at me, especially because I only have one year left before middle school, so..." She shrugs, and Futaba feels intensely bad for her.

"But then Yu came to visit on Sunday," Nanako says. "And... and he told me there was someone in Inaba that had a Palace at my school. And I thought... I thought it couldn't actually be her, but I checked anyway and it _was_..."

"But you still didn't tell anyone?" Futaba asks.

"Because I still thought I could handle it!" Nanako says. "But then before school today, she cornered me in the classroom and she was just... saying stuff."

Futaba opens her mouth to ask what kind of stuff, but something on Nanako's face makes her decide not to say anything. 

"And I just kept thinking about how I knew she had a Palace," Nanako says. "And--and I don't know. It just made it so much harder to listen to what she was saying. So I argued with her."

Futaba hasn't known Nanako for very long at all, but she has the idea that this is not something Nanako would usually do with a teacher.

"And then she grabbed my arms and _shouted_ ," Nanako says. "And she just... I felt like she hated me so much. And that she hated Akira, too, and so I just..." Her voice breaks a little. "I ran away. I went home, and I took the emergency money Dad has in the kitchen, and I found the train schedule from when Yu was checking how to get home earlier, and..." She reaches up to run a nervous hand through her hair. As she does, one sleeve of the sweater she's wearing slips, and Futaba sees fresh bruises around her wrists.

_...she grabbed my arms..._

"And Yu showed me where Akira's staying," Nanako says. "And I just wanted to... I really need to talk to him."

And Futaba understands, now, why Nanako had felt like it would be worth risking Akira's probation to come see him after all that. It sounds like, no matter how much she's been trying to hide it, this is something that's been bothering her for a long time, a swelling raincloud that has finally broken into a messy storm.

At least it explains why Nanako's been skipping class so much.

Maybe she should have _known_ something was wrong.

"Okay," Futaba says. She's trying to think, and she has no idea what the right move is. "So... so, Akira's at school now, and then he has to go meet up with Akechi, because we're trying to figure out why he sold Naoto out, and if he's going to do it to us, too. Do you think you can wait to see him until after that?" Because she knows that Akira will absolutely drop everything, blow off Akechi, and come running home if she tells him that Nanako needs to see him now. She kind of wouldn't even be upset about it, after hearing that story.

"Yes," Nanako says, after a brief pause.

"I'm pretty sure he won't stay too long with Akechi anyway," Futaba says. "So he shouldn't be home too late. Only..." She makes a face. "Maybe you shouldn't meet with him here, just in case? Because of the probation thing."

Nanako is quiet as Futaba thinks this all the way through. Finally, Futaba says, "It's not the greatest place to just hang out, but we could always go meet Akira in Mementos after he's done with Akechi. That's where he meets Yu, so that no one will see them."

"Okay," Nanako says.

"It's _really_ gross looking," Futaba warns her. "And--"

"And that's _fine_ ," Nanako insists.

"Okay," Futaba says. "Then I'm going to..." she sighs. "I can let Akira know what the plan is, unless you want to. He might believe you more than me if you say you're okay with waiting."

Nanako nods. "I can do that," she says.

"And I'm going to make something up to tell Sojiro," Futaba says, waving a hand and pointing generally downward. "Because he was worried about why someone like you just showed up in the middle of the day."

"Yeah," Nanako says. "I... didn't really think through how it was going to look if I came here. I'm sorry for the trouble."

"It's okay," Futaba assures her quickly. "But I need to tell him something, so... I'll be right back."

Nanako nods, and Futaba takes the stairs two at a time as she hurries back down to the café. There's a couple customers sitting in one of the booths now that hadn't been there before Futaba went upstairs, so she hops up onto one of the stools by the counter, on the far side of the room from where they're sitting.

"How did it go?" Sojiro asks her, when he comes to stand close to her.

"It went sort of okay," Futaba says. "But you were right about her running away." She's a little surprised by how quickly the idea of a story to tell him comes together. "She's from some tiny town a few hours away, but she has a brother here, and she ran away from home to come see him." Not even technically a lie, she thinks. Just... stretching the truth. It'll be easier to remember. "Is it okay if I take her back to the house for now? I told her she can hang out here until someone can come get her."

"I don't know..." Sojiro says.

"Please?" Nanako asks. "Because--I don't think we should just kick her out, she doesn't know _anything_ about the city. And if we don't let her stay, you'd probably have to call the police, or--" A flash of inspiration hits. "Or child services, I guess? And we know _they're_ terrible." It had been a nightmare dealing with them after her mom died, and she knows that Sojiro still carries a pretty big grudge over all that. 

"Alright," Sojiro says, giving in. "But--" And he puts so much emphasis on this word that it completely snuffs out Futaba's brief feeling of triumph. "When someone comes to get her, whether that's her brother or her parents or whoever else, I want to meet them. Just to make sure she's going home with the right person. And hopefully not right back into a bad situation."

"Uh..." Her mind goes completely blank. There really aren't a lot of people that can come to get Nanako without Sojiro realizing her connection to Akira, are there? "Uh... y-yeah." 

She curses her stupid mouth for agreeing before her brain has time to come up with a plan. But maybe that's a problem for later--for right now, at least she has a reason for Nanako to stick around until it's time to go meet up with Akira. 

"Okay," Sojiro says. "Then go set her up in the house for now."

Futaba nods.

"And see if she needs something to eat, anything like that," Sojiro adds.

Futaba nods a second time, and goes running back upstairs.

-//-

_May 18_

_After School_

-//-

> **Nanako**
> 
> So I guess Futaba told you I'm in Tokyo?
> 
> Are you okay?
> 
> Yeah, I'm fine. Mostly
> 
> :(
> 
> But can we please talk after you're done with your meeting? Futaba mentioned doing it in Mementos
> 
> If you're sure you're okay with going there
> 
> It'll be safe on the top level, but it's still not great
> 
> I really want to see you, so yes
> 
> Then yeah, I'll let you guys know when I'm done with Akechi, and we can meet up there
> 
> Do you want to see if Yu can come too?
> 
> I think so, yeah
> 
> But please don't tell Dad yet? I don't think he'll realize I'm gone until he gets home from work, and I really want to talk to you first
> 
> Okay

Morgana, who has been reading this conversation over Akira's shoulder, keeps his silence until Akira puts his phone away. "So this is your sister?"

"Yeah," Akira says, still half lost in thought. "Nanako."

"Is she... okay?" Morgana asks carefully.

She doesn't _sound_ okay, does she? "I guess we'll find out," Akira says, with a deep sigh. "After this meeting with Akechi." 

It's just after the end of the last class of the day, and Akira's walking down the street to the place he and Akechi had agreed to meet up. There had been some debate about whether Morgana should come too, which had been put to rest yesterday when Akira walked past the place on his way home to check it out, and spotted the prominent _NO PETS_ sign on the front window. Apparently, Akechi intends this to be a conversation between the two of them, alone. 

"You're sure you'll be okay on your own?" Morgana asks.

"Yeah," Akira says. "I'll be fine."

"Because you seem kind of distracted."

Of _course_ he's distracted. But this is important, and Nanako seems like she's okay with waiting another hour or so to see him, so... he'll get through this. "I'm fine, Morgana," Akira assures him. "I'll meet up with you after and tell you everything that happens, okay?"

"Okay," Morgana says, with a certain amount of reluctance. "But if he tries to do anything..."

"I'll text you," Akira says.

"Not _funny_ ," Morgana grumbles, hopping out of Akira's bag. He lands gracefully on the sidewalk, and looks up at Akira.

"I could scream really loud?"

"Akira!"

"I'll set the building on fire."

Morgana gives him a _look_ , and struts away with his tail held high. Akira goes inside.

There are a couple other Shujin students there, so Akira doesn't stand out as he finds a table in a back corner and sits down to wait for Akechi to show up. It takes him a little while to get there, and when he does show up, he's just--there. Quiet and abrupt, so sudden that he takes Akira a little bit by surprise, even though he'd been expecting him. Akira reminds himself that everything that's about to happen is _important_ , and slides a smile onto his face in place of the worried expression that's been sitting there ever since he found out Nanako is in Tokyo. 

"Hey," he says. "Thanks for agreeing to meet up."

"I'm sorry it took me so long to get back to you about it," Akechi says, as he sits down across the table from Akira. "I'm... not used to other people knowing about the metaverse."

Akira considers, for a second, how much to say. He decides there's no point in explaining to Akechi that the Investigation Team exists, and that therefore Akira has known about other Persona-users for almost as long as he's known about Persona. He doesn't want anyone else on Yu's team to be hurt like Naoto had been. On the other hand, he's already met the rest of the Phantom Thieves, so they're probably safe to talk about. "I know," he says instead. "I started out fighting Shadows on my own, and now all of a sudden there's this whole _team_. I'm still getting used to it."

"And do you mind if I ask how you found your Persona?" Akechi asks.

Akira shrugs. "The usual way," he says. "I stumbled into the T--the metaverse. My Shadow said some things to me that I didn't want to hear, and I eventually accepted it and it became my Persona."

There's a second of genuine surprise on Akechi's face. Then he says. "Is that--the usual way of getting a Persona?" he asks.

"Isn't that how it happened for you?" Akira asks.

There's a beat where both of them just kind of look at each other.

"...yes, of course," Akechi says.

Akira makes a mental note to ask around and see if there's maybe another way to awaken a Persona, besides confronting a Shadow. Maybe Morgana will know, since he has so many random metaverse-related facts knocking around in his head behind his amnesia. Or he could possibly convince the twins to tell him something. They seem like they've been thawing toward him a little, during his last few visits to the Velvet Room.

"So have you ever told anyone about the metaverse?" Akira asks, before the awkward silence between them can stretch out for too long.

"Never," Akechi says. "Who would believe me?"

"Fair," Akira says, with a half smile.

"What about you?"

Akira shakes his head no in an immediate lie, then hesitates. If Akechi spends any time at all around him or the other Phantom Thieves, he's going to pick up on the fact that he and Yusuke have known each other for years, and that Yusuke has had his Persona for a while. "Well," he says. "Just Yusuke. You met him the other day in Kamoshida's Palace. Fox?"

"I remember," Akechi says, with the look of someone making a mental note.

"He--it's kind of a long story, but he accidentally ended up in the metaverse when we were kids. I went in to help him out, and before I got to him, he'd faced his Shadow, too. I wasn't exactly going to keep him out of the loop after that."

"I imagine it would be a hard thing to do," Akechi says. 

Silence stretches between them. It's _hard_ , it turns out, to have a conversation with someone you don't trust, without letting him know that you don't trust him, and also he's lying to you and you _know_ he's lying to you, and you're lying to him but you don't know if he knows that you're lying to him.

Akira's head starts to hurt, slightly.

He hadn't come into this expecting Akechi to spill all his secrets, but if he can at least get Akechi interested in meeting up again, that'll be a win. Whatever's going on with Akechi, Akira would have been shocked if he was careless enough to let his guard down around someone he barely knows. It's going to take a lot more work than just this one meeting today. "So," he says. "Why did you finally agree to meet up with me? I honestly didn't think you were going to text me back, at fist."

"I had a lot to think through," Akechi says, after a pause. "I don't know for sure that I can trust you, after all."

There is so much hypocrisy to this statement that Akira has to clench his jaw to stop his mouth from falling open in surprise. "I guess you would think that way," he says. Because Akechi is a traitor himself. "Because you've been in the metaverse on your own for so long."

"But I realized I'd never learn anything if I didn't at least try to talk to you," Akechi says. "So. Here we are." He leans forward. "And... I have to admit that I'm--curious. About what you were talking about before. Changing hearts."

Akira nods. "It sounds like you're mostly using the metaverse to... observe and investigate, right?"

"Yes," Akechi agrees. "I've been working alone, remember. I can fight, because it's impossible to avoid the Shadows completely, but it's never occurred to me that you could do something like what all of you did in that Palace." He leans forward, slightly, and adds, "I saw what happened to Suguru Kamoshida. And I'm curious--were the calling cards a necessary part of the process, or a stylistic choice?"

"Necessary," Akira says, after a beat. He feels like Akechi is getting a lot more information about him out of this conversation than Akira is getting out of Akechi.

"Interesting," Akechi says. "It seems like there are some significant parts of the metaverse that you and your friends know about that I don't."

Strangely, the undertone of bitterness in Akechi's tone makes Akira feel very slightly better about the way this conversation is going. He doesn't think it's going particularly well for him, but maybe Akechi isn't getting what he wants, either.

"I'm sure there's things you know that we don't, too," Akira says. Such as what Akechi's up to and why.

"I'm sure there is," Akechi says. "And that's why--" A pause. His expression says _I can't believe I'm about to say this._ "I was wondering if you might be willing to change the heart of a target I suggest."

Cautiously, but trying to sound casual, Akira says, "I guess that would depend on who you have in mind."

"No one yet," Akechi says. "But I certainly run into my share of detestable people with Palaces. Sometimes the police can't do anything about them in the real world. I'm sure there will be situations in the future when a change of heart would be a good idea."

Akira is extremely interested in what target Akechi might try and bring to the Phantom Thieves. He's also pretty skeptical that Akechi would be completely honest about his reasoning for anyone he brought to them as a potential change of heart candidate. He hedges. "Possibly," he says. "Everyone would have to agree on the target, of course."

"That seems fair," Akechi acknowledges. 

"And--" he sees his opportunity to make sure he and Akechi will continue to talk in the future, and he takes it. "And you'd have to fight with us."

There's a slight hesitation this time before Akechi nods. He even manages a smile, which looks practiced and slightly fake. Or maybe Akira's just way too suspicious of Akechi right now. "Alright," he says. "I suppose it would be unfair to ask all of you to risk your lives for a target I suggest, unless I'm willing to risk mine as well."

"Then we have a deal," Akira says, holding a hand out. "You bring us a target, and as long as we all agree on it, we change their heart."

Akechi nods. "Deal," he says, and takes Akira's hand.

And time seems to slow, just for a beat, as Akira hears--

_I am thou... thou art I..._

_Thou hast acquired a new vow..._

_It shall become the wings of rebellion that breaketh thy chains of captivity. With the birth of the Hanged Man Persona, you have obtained the winds of blessing that shall lead to freedom and new power..._

He doesn't remember much of what Akechi says after that, except that it's not too long after that when Akechi says he has to leave, and hurries out. Akira lingers a few minutes longer, letting all the tension of the last several minutes fade out of him. 

He puts a hand over his face and leans back in his seat. "Seriously, Lavenza?" he mutters. " _That_ guy?"

There's no answer, of course, so Akira sighs and goes to pick up Morgana, and then move on to Shibuya to meet Futaba and Nanako.

-//-

Akechi goes a few blocks before letting some of his composure leak out of him. He... doesn't know if he got what he'd wanted out of that meeting at all. Yes, he'd learned a little bit of Akira's history in the metaverse, but not enough, not _nearly_ enough to satisfy his curiosity.

(And... he'd faced his own Shadow to awaken his Persona? Akechi had stumbled into a Palace, gotten in over his head, and torn his mask away to summon Loki when he was about to die)

(He does not want to imagine what it would have been like to face his Shadow. There are many, many parts of himself that he refuses to acknowledge, things that _no one else_ knows about him, but which he's sure his Shadow would have used against him if given the chance)

And now he's agreed to potentially fight alongside the Phantom Thieves, if and when they can agree on a target. Akechi has decided, after plenty of consideration, that the best way to make use of these new Persona-users is to point them toward targets that he can't (or isn't supposed to) target on his own, and let them handle things. With the confirmation that their modus operandi _requires_ those flashy calling cards that had made the news after Kamoshida's breakdown, Akechi is confidant that any changes of heart will be attributed to them and not to him. 

But he hadn't been able to think of a reason to avoid fighting _with_ them, especially after he'd just confirmed to Akira that he is capable of fighting Shadows. So. That's less than ideal.

He heads home, feeling unhappy and troubled. He'd hoped that this meeting would help him feel more confident about the Thieves, but instead he feels just as in over his head as ever.

Great.

-//-

_May 18_

_Evening_

-//-

When Yu gets to Mementos, Akira and Morgana are already there, partway through a conversation that cuts off when they realize they're not alone.

"Oh," Akira says, tensing up for a second, then relaxing when he recognizes Yu. "It's just you."

In any other circumstances, Yu might have made a joke about feeling unwelcome. Right now, though, he's worried about the weird text he'd gotten from _Nanako_ of all people asking if he could get to Mementos. "What's going on?"

"I don't know," Akira says.

"Akira."

"I seriously don't know," Akira says. "I just know she showed up at Leblanc this afternoon, and Futaba's been with her since then, but--"

"With who?" Yu asks.

"With Nanako."

Well. That... at least explains why the text had come from Nanako. It's just that the idea of Nanako showing up in Tokyo, unannounced and unexpected, is so far down the list of possible explanations for why she'd have sent that text that Yu hadn't even considered it. "But... why?" he asks.

"I seriously don't know," Akira says. "We're meeting up here because _she's_ on my list of people I'm not supposed to see during my probation too."

"Geeze," Yu mutters. He remembers the way he'd left Nanako on Monday morning, looking worried and sad, and _still_ not willing to tell him anything about what's worrying her.

They wait in silence for a while. The usual background sounds of Mementos--howling winds and distant moans--seem louder with nobody saying anything. Eventually, though, there's a slight change in the atmosphere and a small _oh!_ When Yu turns, he sees Futaba--in full metaverse costume--and _Nanako_. 

"Akira!" she says, and runs to him with as much enthusiasm as she'd greeted Yu a couple days before. As soon as she gets to him (her enthusiastic hug almost knocks him off his feet), she starts crying.

Since Yu is not involved in the hug, he looks over at Futaba for some kind of explanation. She starts explaining the digest version, with Nanako eventually calming down enough to elaborate on a few things. By the end, she's dry eyed but clearly still upset, looking down at the floor instead of at anyone else. Yu keeps trading looks with Akira, and sees the same guilt on his face that he feels on his own. At least one of them should have realized something was wrong.

(Yu _had_ realized something was wrong, during his visit home, but...)

(He just hadn't realized that things were _this_ wrong. If he had, he would never have left without getting the full story out of her)

"I'm sorry that..." Nanako wipes at her face. "I'm sorry I came all the way out here and worried everyone so much. I just--couldn't stand the idea of staying in class today. I wanted--I wanted to see you guys."

"It's okay," Akira says.

"Are you sure?" Nanako says.

"I mean, I got to see you," Akira says. "So that part's awesome." He smiles for a second, but it fades almost immediately. "And now we can all figure out what to do together."

"Thank you," Nanako says quietly. "But I don't think there's anything that anyone _can_ do."

"Definitely not true," Akira says. "First of all, you have to tell your dad."

"But--"

"He's right," Yu says, before Nanako can get anywhere at all with that objection. "Bare minimum, you need to not be in class with that teacher. And as soon as your dad finds out about this, he's going to do whatever it takes to make sure you get moved to someone that's not going to..." _actually hurt you._ "Give you such a hard time."

"And then," Morgana says, speaking up for the first time. "We can take on that Palace."

"No!" Nanako says. Then she looks at Morgana (and pauses for a second in which her expression basically screams _this cat is adorable_ , even under these circumstances). A second later, her shoulders slump a little. "Sorry," she says. "You're, um... you're Morgana, right?"

"Oh yeah," Akira says, wincing slightly. "Sorry, I guess we didn't really get to introductions. Nanako, this is Morgana, he's not a cat--"

" _Thank_ you."

"And Morgana, this is Nanako."

She sort of smiles a little bit, but it doesn't reach her eyes, and it doesn't last. "But I mean... we _can't_ do anything about the Palace. Akira can't go back to Inaba."

"If you think I can't _figure out_ a way to get back to Inaba for this," Akira says. "You have not been paying attention during the last five years."

" _Or_ ," Yu says, shooting Akira a look. "There are a bunch of other Persona-users still in Inaba that can handle this, so that Akira doesn't have to break his probation."

"It'd be worth it," Akira mutters.

" _None_ of us can do anything about the Palace until we figure out what the distortion is," Futaba says, which is a fair point, actually. "So we can argue about who's going to steal Ishikawa's heart later. Right?"

"She's not hurting anyone else, is she?" Yu asks Nanako. "So for now, if Dojima can get you into another class, the Palace can wait at least a little while, while we figure out how to get into it."

"No," Nanako says. "She's fine with everyone else, as far as I've seen. She's just... angry at me because of what happened with her and Akira and that guy. I think I'll be okay, if I don't have to actually see her in class every day."

"Okay," Yu says. "So that's the plan for now. I can talk to your dad with you, if you want. We'll get you put in another class, and then as soon as we figure out the last keyword for Ishikawa, we'll go through her Palace."

Nanako smiles. It's a little bit watery, and Yu can tell that it's going to be a while before she's actually okay with all of this. But it's a step in the right direction, at least.

And then he hears something behind them, from back by the escalator leading further into Mementos. A voice that echoes slightly more than it should in the space, and also sounds strangely familiar.

"...is that _really_ good enough, though?"

Yu turns, and for a second he doesn't know what to make of the little girl standing there, wearing a pink dress, her hair done up in pigtails, her eyes the bright, unmistakable yellow of a Shadow. 

Only, he's never seen a Shadow of someone that looked the way that person _used_ to look, instead of how they are in the present. But this is the Nanako of five years ago, Yu is absolutely sure.

-//-

_May 18_

_After School_

-//-

Nanako's first reaction, when she sees her own Shadow, is fear. Akira has told her what it was like when he faced his Shadow, and even though he's never really gone into a whole lot of detail, what Nanako has heard makes her very, very upset about the idea of facing hers.

"It's not enough, is it?" the Shadow asks, and Nanako can't take her eyes off the serious expression on that girl's face. Her face. Her face the way it used to be. "It's not good enough to just let everyone else keep taking care of you."

"What is going on here?" Morgana says. Nanako is only half aware of the words, or of Akira's answering, "Mona, _shh_. She's got this."

"You can't do anything but sit there and _take it_ ," her Shadow says. "You sit there, and you _wait_ , for everybody else to take care of you. And if they can't? Then you don't do anything! You just let your teacher keep hurting you, for months, because you couldn't do anything, and because you're not as important as anyone else."

That's not--it's not _true_. It's not that she's less important, it's that--everyone else problems are more important than hers.

(...that's the same thing, though, isn't it?)

"You couldn't do anything when Akira left," her Shadow says, and it's like she knows that Nanako is shaking in her shoes _(of course she knows)_ because her voice is rising, getting louder and angrier as she continues. "You could never do anything when there were Shadows in Inaba either, could you? Everyone else was fighting them and you couldn't do _anything_ but trail along after the people that were _useful_ and _cry--_

"I didn't--!" She _knows_ what she's not supposed to say to her Shadow. She knows perfectly well that she's not supposed to say that it's not her, but... but she hates the things she's hearing so much. She hates that her Shadow is saying all this in front of Akira, and Yu, who are her _family_ , and in front of Futaba, who is way too cool to be the friend she's kind-of sort-of turning into, and in front of Morgana, who doesn't even know her yet, and is probably going to think this is everything there is to know about her. Nanako takes a deep breath. "I didn't cry," she says.

Not where anyone else could see her. And not until after, when everything was all over.

"You didn't do anything that would actually _help_ , either," her Shadow says. "Not when the Shadows attacked Inaba. Not when they came back for the P-1 Tournament. And not when..." The Shadow's smile is cruel in a way that Nanako hopes her own _never_ is. "Do you know why I look like this?" she asks, pressing one hand against her own chest.

Nanako does. She can almost _smell_ the false scents of Heaven--the grass and the flowers, sickeningly sweet, too much to be real, nothing but her own fractured, childish ideas of what it was supposed to look like after death. And she can remember what it had been like, trapped there for days--

(and she couldn't do anything to get herself out)

She remembers Akira jumping in after her, trying to fight an adult three times his size, then tumbling into the TV World in a way that left him with a head injury bad enough that she was scared he'd never wake up--

(and she couldn't do anything to help him)

She remembers how easily _he'd_ been able to move around, how easy it would have been for him to escape immediately after he eventually woke up, but how he'd stayed with her instead, because he was worried that she wouldn't be able to defend herself without him--

(and she couldn't have defended herself, he'd been right)

She remembers that it had taken Akira, and Yusuke, and Yu, and the whole Investigation Team, to finally get through Heaven to rescue her, that it had been the hardest thing they'd faced at that point, the hardest thing they'd _ever_ faced, apart from Adachi the murderer and eventually _Izanami herself_ \--

(and she couldn't do anything)

She remembers that she'd been sick in the hospital for a long time afterward, that everyone had been worried about her, that she'd gotten worse while everyone sat around and worried about her--

(and she couldn't do anything but _die_ )

"I've been inside you all this time," her Shadow tells her. "Waiting. Because back _then_ , you were too young to realize how useless you really are."

"I'm not useless!" Nanako protests. "I'm--I'm not..."

"Yes you are," her Shadow says. "And I should know, because I'm you!"

" _You're not me!"_

The words burst out of her before she can stop herself, and she knows immediately that she's made a mistake. She's said the one thing that you're never, ever supposed to say to your Shadow, and now everyone's going to have to fight for her all over again, because there's nothing she can do to protect herself, she hasn't changed at all since she was _six years old_ , and...

Akira's arms around her interrupt her horrible, spiraling thought process, and Nanako clings to him without thinking. There are sounds, from behind her, from outside the tight, warm world of her and Akira and the reassurance of his hug. Nanako can hear weapons being drawn, and something gross and drawn out from the Shadow as it--changes. "It's okay," he tells her. "I said the same thing to mine. It's _hard_ , to accept the things you don't like about yourself."

"I don't want everyone to have to protect me," she tells him.

"We want to protect you," Akira says. "Because we love you, and that's what you do for the people you love."

Nanako's pretty sure he's just talking about himself and Yu, because the other two just don't _know_ her that well, but the words ease something inside her anyway. "I know," she tells him. "I _know_ , but..."

"It's okay," he tells her again.

"I love you, too."

"Aki-- _Joker_ ," Yu calls.

He lets go of Nanako. "I have to go stab your Shadow real quick," he tells her. "Be right back."

"Sorry," she says.

"Nah," he says, with what she's pretty sure is at least partially faked bravado. "It'll be fun."

Nanako takes a few steps back, as far as she can in the confined space. She watches Akira and Yu and Morgana taking up fighting stances in front of her horribly twisted Shadow (vaguely humanoid, covered in feathers like sharp spikes). Futaba, who is _also_ standing behind the fight, ready to summon her Persona. When she sees Nanako looking at her, she gives her a thumbs up and then moves over so that she's standing _with_ her.

But there's no time to think about it right this second, because that's when the fight starts.

And...

And.

And Nanako has always _known_ that there are people in her life that love her. Her dad, her mom (before she died), Yu, Akira. They've told her that they love her. Akira had said it to her right here, less than thirty seconds ago. She's heard it, and she'd thought she believed it. But it's not until this fight in a blood covered subway that Nanako _absolutely knows_ that she is loved. That it doesn't matter to Akira or to Yu if she's never able to do anything at all to defend herself. It doesn't matter to them that she has to rely on them. In every attack with sword or dagger, with every _eiga_ and _ziodyne_ , Nanako sees that they love her.

It's a lot harder to feel small, and unworthy, and stupid and _useless_ when her family is announcing to her that they love her with such insistent and forceful exclamations.

"What the actual _heck_ ," Futaba mutters, as the tide of the fight turns, and starts to favor the Persona-users instead of the Shadows. "Nanako, your cousin is like... crazy powerful."

"I know," Nanako says.

"No," Futaba says. "But seriously--I thought _Akira_ was strong, but Yu is on a whole other level."

"You guys doing okay?" Yu calls, in a space where the Shadow is swelling itself up for a hard attack. All three fighters have settled into a guarding position as they brace for it, but Yu is barely paying attention, turning back to look back over his shoulder at Nanako and Futaba.

"We're fine!" Futaba calls back at him.

"I thought I heard my name?"

"Just talking about how you're god-moding this fight," Futaba tells him.

His expression is polite, but confused.

"It's a video game thing," Akira tells him.

"Is it a good thing?" Yu asks.

"Yep!"

"Okay then, I guess?" Yu says.

"Here comes the attack!" Futaba shouts. "Everyone brace!"

The Shadow bears down on all three fighters, tearing a fistful of iron-sharp spikes off her arm and hurling them at their direction. Morgana takes it hard but manages to stay standing, Akira flips back out of the way, and Yu deflects about half of them with his careful guard. The half that _do_ hit, even Nanako can tell, don't make much of an impact.

"Crazy powerful," Futaba mutters again. Then she raises her voice, and shouts at Akira that he needs to either _back off attacking for a second_ or switch to a Persona with some better defenses. Morgana casts _dia_ on him instead, and the fight goes on.

Nanako has seen plenty of fights with Shadows before. She'd watched Akira go through an army of them, when the TV World almost merged with Inaba, and then she'd stood next to him and her dad and a small crowd of people from Inaba shouted their encouragement to the Investigation Team while they fought Adachi. She'd even tagged along a few months later during the second P-1 Tournament, when Akira and Rise and Ken had fought Shadow copies of other Persona-users. And then there had been the incident with the _dancing_...

So she at least knows enough about Shadow fights to know that there's something special about this one. It's the way Yu and Akira fight, neither of them taking a leader position over the other, just doing their own thing but _always_ with the other one in mind. Akira keeps up a running back and forth with Morgana, who's obviously gotten used to looking to him for guidance, and Futaba never stops shouting her reminders to all three of them about the Shadow's weaknesses and what to watch out for and when to guard.

But Akira and Yu?

It just works, with the two of them.

The fight lasts for what feels to Nanako like forever, but eventually the Shadow goes down, dissolving back into that younger version of Nanako. 

" _Awesome_ ," Akira says, collapsing immediately into an exhausted sitting position. Morgana is already on the ground next to him, lying flat on his stomach and moaning slightly. 

(Akira spots this, and reaches over to pat him on the back of the head)

Yu stays standing, looking a little red in the face and slightly winded, but otherwise fine. "Nanako?" he prompts her.

"Y-yeah?" 

But she already knows what she has to do, and he doesn't have to say anything else to prompt her to move forward toward her own Shadow. The others clear a little space around her, and Nanako kneels down next to her fallen Shadow. "It's okay," she says quietly. "You know? Sometimes it's okay to need other people. It's--nice, sometimes. And just because I've always never been able to do much to help them in the past, it doesn't mean that I can't change in the future." 

Her Shadow says nothing, just looks up at her with the sad eyes of the smaller girl Nanako used to be.

"I'm you," she says. "But... you're not exactly me, are you?"

And her Shadow suddenly _smiles_ , and shakes her head, and for a third time she changes shape--this time, she sheds that smaller form, growing into a mirror image of Nanako as she is _now_. 

Close to a mirror image. The Shadow is wearing a mask.

"That's better," Nanako says quietly. " _Now_ you're me."

The Shadow nods, and reaches up to lift the mask away from her eyes. She holds it out in front of her, and Nanako takes it. For an instant, their fingers touch. And then the Shadow fades, and Nanako studies the mask. It looks a lot like Akira's, actually, but slightly yellowed like the color of old parchment. She lifts it onto her face with hands that shake only _very_ slightly, and shouts--

" _Murasaki Shikibu!_ "

The Persona bursts from her heart, a woman wearing the old fashioned kimono of a thousand years ago, but crafted out of dozens of a kind of shining, iron feather. Or... no, Nanako sees, they're actually _not_ feathers. Quills. In place of the sash-like obi that would normally wrap around the kimino to tie it closed, there's something that looks like thick, cream colored parchment. Her face is calm and still, and not _quite_ human. A blank page, Nanako thinks, and she likes the thought.

And then a part of her Persona seems to _unfurl,_ the thick paper obi swirling out around Nanako. There's information there, about the area around them, about Mementos, about the other people and their Persona. It's written on the paper but also on something deeper and more intrinsic to Nanako's understanding. She _knows_ it, and with that knowledge she feels... whole.

Her Persona fades and Nanako sways slightly, suddenly exhausted. She realizes she's not wearing her own clothes, but something darker and... weirdly familiar.

"I knew you could do it," Yu says, hurrying over to help her stay standing.

"I'm--Yu, I'm sorry I couldn't just... accept it," Nanako says.

He grins at her. "I didn't mind the workout."

"Hey," Futaba calls, from where she's still standing on the far side of the room, away from where the fight had been. "Navigator?"

Nanako feels a little burst of pride as she nods. "Navigator," she confirms.

Futaba cheers for her.

"Sorry," Morgana says. He's recovered enough by now to be back on his feet, but looks _really_ freaked out. "But can someone please explain to me what all that was with her Shadow?"

"What do you mean?" Akira asks. "You saw her get her Persona, didn't you?"

"Yeah," Morgana says. "But I mean, that's not--that isn't usually how it goes!"

Akira shrugs. "Everyone I know that has a Persona got it from fighting their Shadow. Well--except Futaba didn't actually _fight_ hers, and I don't think Yu had to fight either?"

"Nope," Yu agrees.

"But everyone else," Akira says. "How else would someone get a Persona?"

"Ann and Ryuji just had to take their masks off," Morgana says.

"Seriously?" Akira asks. "That sounds _so much easier_."

"There's usually a lot of blood involved," Morgana says doubtfully. "And it looks pretty painful, so I don't think it's _that_ much easier."

" _Still_ ," Akira mutters.

Nanako bites her tongue to stop a laugh at his outraged expression, but Akira obviously sees the smile she can't quite hide. His gaze drifts back over to her, and doesn't leave for a while.

"What are you thinking?" she asks, as he continues to watch her with a grin growing on his face.

"I'm thinking... Quill," he says.

"What?" she says. 

"For a codename," he clarifies. "Because of how your Persona looks."

"Quill," Morgana repeats. "I kind of like it."

"Do you?" Akira asks, looking at Nanako.

She nods. She _does_ like it.

(She has a codename)

(She has a Persona and a codename and she thinks she's going to pass out soon, _but_ )

"Then I guess that's that," Akira says. "And we should probably get you out of here before you keel over."

"Yeah," she says. "That... that sounds pretty good."

It takes a little bit of arranging to get everyone out of Mementos, because Akira isn't supposed to be with either Yu _or_ Nanako, and because Nanako is supposed to be back at the Sakura house with Futaba, which means he can't go home with _her_ , either. In the end, Nanako and Futaba leave first with Yu, while Akira and Morgana hang back and plan to take the next train back to Leblanc.

The reality of Tokyo feels almost strange after the darkness in Mementos, and Nanako blinks against the bright subway lights.

"Dad called four times," she says, when she thinks to look down at her phone. The metanav is there too, a bright red eye staring up at her from her home screen. "I guess he must have gotten home and realized I wasn't there." Which isn't exactly unheard of, but she usually tells him when she's going somewhere after school.

"Let's get back to the house before you call him back," Futaba says. "I, um... might have told Sojiro that someone was going to come and pick you up, so we need to figure that out anyway."

"Do you want me to do that?" Yu asks, the question addressed to both of them.

"I want to talk to Dad first," Nanako says, after a brief pause. "So he knows what's going on." He's going to be so mad that she ran off, but she thinks that _maybe_ he'll be a little less mad if she talks to him now before do anything else.

"Okay," he says. "And then after you talk to him, let me know if you need anything."

"I will," she says, and then hugs him. "And... thanks again, Yu. For everything."

"Of course," he says, returning the hug. A few people in the crowded station shoot them dirty looks for blocking the flow of foot traffic, but they both ignore them. "And--if you ever need anything else, call me. Maybe beforeyou feel like you need to run away next time, okay?"

"Okay," Nanako agrees, managing a slightly shaky laugh. He smiles at her, then heads off to get his own train. Nanako trails after Futaba, feeling more and more tired, until they finally get to the train that will take them back to Leblanc. It's not as crowded anymore as it had been when they took the trip out here, and both of them manage to get seats. Nanako sits slumped slightly into the chair, feeling like she'd like to just pass out and sleep for a thousand years.

When they're about halfway there, though, a thought bubbles to the surface of her tired mind, and she says, "Futaba?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you know how metaverse costumes get picked?"

She keeps her voice low because of the people around them, but no one seems to be listening to the two of them anyway.

"Not exactly," Futaba tells her, after considering for a second. "Morgana said something once about it representing the 'spirit of rebellion,' so I think it kind of depends on what _you_ think that's supposed to look like." 

"I think mine looks a lot like Akira's," Nanako says.

"It does," Futaba agrees. "Not _exactly_ the same, but--" She sounds like she's smiling, but Nanako is too tired to even lift her head and check. "So I guess your idea of rebellion is basically Akira?"

That sounds about right, actually. "He'll be thrilled," Nanako says.

"No kidding," Futaba agrees. 

And, honestly, Nanako doesn't mind it much either. She doesn't think there's a much better roll model for trouble and rebellion than her Trickster sort-of-brother, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Murasaki Shikibu, is the tenth century Japanese author of The Tale of Genji, arguably the first novel ever written. I picked her as Nanako's Persona for a few different reasons, starting with the idea that I wanted her Persona to be an author (or somehow tied to writing). It felt like a good fit for a navigator Persona, especially since Nanako started keeping written records of Shadows way before she ever had a Persona.
> 
> I also wanted something that would feel like it could fit equally well as a Persona in either P4 or P5. So, like a lot of P4 Persona, she's drawn from Japanese history (although she's admittedly more 'actual history' than 'deity or possible legend'). And, being a woman who wrote a full on novel during a time when women were not even supposed to be learning to write, she (slightly loosely) fits the rebellion theme of P5. It's a level of overlap I'm happy with, anyway.
> 
> The Tale of Genji is also known for its meticulous internal consistency of over 400 major and minor characters, which seems like the kind of thing that would appeal to Nanako and her memorizing however many Shadows, and their attacks, and their strengths and weaknesses, when she was six and had never even seen one in person.


	15. May 18-May 19

_May 18_

_Evening_

-//-

Akira makes sure to stay in Mementos for a while after everyone else has left, so that he can make sure he won't be on the same train as Futaba and Nanako when he heads home again. It's--probably better for him to keep as far away from Nanako as possible, at least in public. So, to kill time while he waits, he wanders over to the Velvet Room door to see Justine.

"That was impressive," she tells him, in her usual calm, quiet tone. "You have formed strong bonds with the people around you, and it shows."

"Thanks," Akira says. On the inside, he's still bursting with excitement at the fact that he'd finally gotten the chance to fight with Yu and hold his own--he's not at Yu's level yet, but he's not the same twelve year old that had been stuck on the sidelines during the biggest fights. He's pretty sure he's doing a good job of sounding casual for Justine, though. "It's--kind of the easiest part of all this. Bonds and things, I mean. I found some good friends back home, and then more when I got to Tokyo. I would have wanted to get to know them even if I wasn't getting anything out of it, so it's just a nice extra that it helps."

"Really?" Justine asks. 

"Sure," Akira says. "I've never had a bond with Yu, and he's really important to me anyway. And I mean..." He trails off, gesturing between the two of them.

"Yes," Justine agrees thoughtfully. "That is strange."

Akira has gotten used to hearing Lavenza's voice whispering to him whenever he meets with a new bond, like he had with Akechi just today. But he's never heard anything like that with the twins, and he has no idea why there's no bond between them at all. It seems like there should be, since they're helping him though his so-called _rehabilitation_. 

"There's no reason why our bond should already be so high," Justine says.

"So--wait." Akira frowns. That's not what he'd been expecting to hear at all. "We... do have a bond?"

"So it seems," Justine says, and she sounds troubled. "There is a strong one between myself and my sister, and you."

Which doesn't make any sense at all to Akira. He's never (as far as he knows?) had a bond form with someone _without_ hearing that voice in his head that belongs to Lavenza. He wishes that he knew more about how bonds worked, but... he just doesn't. He knows that they form between himself and certain people that he's close to. He knows that they're represented by different arcana, and that strengthening his bonds somehow increases the power of Persona that he fuses within that same arcana. But how it happens? _Why_? He has absolutely no idea.

"What arcana does our bond belong to?" he asks Justine.

"Strength," she tells him.

"Strength," Akira repeats, slowly, feeling even more confused than he had before asking the question. It's true that he hadn't been paying as much attention as he maybe should have been to things like this when he was twelve, but he's almost positive that strength had been the arcana belonging to his bond with Lavenza. "Justine, do you know if... if it would be possible for someone to replace someone else in a bond, in a particular arcana?"

She considers the question. Then shakes her head. "I don't know," she says.

"Oh," Akira says.

"There are... we..." Justine trails off, and Akira thinks he sees genuine worry on her face, behind the eyepatch that makes it so difficult sometimes to read her expression. He realizes (with a guilt born from the fresh knowledge of _how much he'd missed seeing_ with Nanako) that he hasn't done very much to try and reach out to either of the twins. They're not the easiest people to get along with, sometimes. And there's always the selfish part of his mind that can't stop being _angry_ that they're here and Lavenza's not.

...but the Velvet Room attendants are people too (not _human,_ but _people_ ), and like anyone else, they have feelings. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asks Justine.

"About what?" she says, with just a suggestion of defensiveness in her tone.

"About whatever you're so nervous about," he says.

"No," Justine says, after a pause. "There's... nothing."

Except that there obviously is, and Akira is not particularly interested in letting somebody else suffer in silence until they burst, like Nanako had. So Akira takes a step forward, and says, "Listen. I don't know where our bond came from any more than you do, but we have it, and I want to help you if I can."

"I'm not sure what you could possibly do," Justine says.

"Neither do I," Akira says. "But I'd like to try."

She thinks about this for so long that Akira doesn't think she's ever going to answer him, but eventually she does. "There are things that my sister and I should know," she says. "And we don't. There are things that... we feel we should be doing that we're not, and we don't even know what they are." More quietly, she adds, "And there are things we are doing that we feel we should not do."

Akira nods. "I don't know if it's... I don't know, maybe it's rude to say something like this, but the other Velvet Room attendants I've met always seem like they kind of know everything."

Justine hesitates. Then, in a voice that sounds higher and less certain than it had a second ago, she asks, "... _are_ there others?"

"Yeah," Akira says. "I don't know how many there are, exactly, but I've met three of them. Plus Marie, who kind of lived in the Velvet Room for a while but was doing her own thing?" He shrugs. "I could tell you what I know about them, if you want."

"Yes," Justine says. 

"Yeah?"

"I would like that," Justine says. "And I think my sister would as well."

Morgana--who has been on the other side of the room, looking generally exhausted after the fight with Nanako's Shadow--chooses this moment to come over and interrupt what probably looks to him like Akira standing around and talking to no one. "Do you think it's been long enough that we can leave to catch the next train?" he asks.

"It--" Akira hesitates for a second before answering, looking between Morgana and Justine. She makes the decision for him.

"You have had a busy day, inmate," she tells him. "We will contact you when the time is better to talk."

He nods at her (although he's also wondering how she plans on contacting him?) and pulls his phone out. "I think it's probably been long enough," he says to Morgana. "Sorry that today turned out--uh. You know. It wasn't something I was planning on."

(Although it's _not_ a bad thing for Nanako to have a Persona of her own)

Morgana nods, obviously too tired for much more conversation, and Akira hides a wince. He knows that _he_ feels tired after taking on that Shadow, and Morgana has a lot less practice using his Persona. That probably wasn't a Shadow that he should have needed to help out with.

But he had jumped into the fight with the rest of them, without being asked, even though he's only just met Nanako. 

They head back to the real world, and Akira bends down to scoop Morgana up as he reverts to cat form. "Thanks, Morgana," he says, as he deposits him in his school bag. "For helping."

"Yeah, yeah..." Morgana says, and his casual tone is slightly undercut by the enormous yawn that interrupts the words.

Akira doesn't say anything about the faint sound of feline snoring that starts about halfway through the trip back to Yongen-Jaya, and he does his best to stay quiet as he makes the usual walk from the station back to the café. He'd gone into Mementos pretty late because of his earlier meeting with Akechi, and he half expects Sojiro to have already gone home by the time he gets back. He's still behind the counter though, taking inventory, and Akira waves at him as he makes a beeline for the stairs to the attic.

"Come back down after you've put your things away," Sojiro calls after him. "I need your help with something."

"Sure," Akira says, quietly. "I'll be down in a minute."

Sojiro gives him a weird look. "Why are you whispering?"

Akira points to his bag. "Morgana's asleep," he says, still at half volume.

Sojiro opens his mouth, closes it again, then shakes his head. Akira takes this as a dismissal, and runs the rest of the way upstairs, trying to jostle Morgana as little as possible.

-//-

_May 18_

_Evening_

-//-

Sojiro is not a stupid man. 

He knows that Futaba and Akira are hiding something from him, and right up until this afternoon, when they dragged a girl that couldn't have been older than ten or eleven into their lying, he'd been willing to overlook it. His wards are both teenagers, and some level of rebellion is--well, it's the kind of things kids do at that age, isn't it? And if the price of Futaba leaving her room again, of her making friends and seeming genuinely _happy,_ is that Sojiro doesn't get to know everything that she gets up to with those new friends, that seems like a fair trade. She's not coming home hurt or scared, and so the risks had seemed low.

Now there's a kid involved, and Sojiro had been worried about how scared she'd seemed, even before Futaba immediately and uncharacteristically took her under her wing. He might have been impressed (and even proud) of the fact that she's reaching out to people now (when a few months ago she hadn't even been able to leave her own room), except that he's absolutely sure he'd heard Akira's name from upstairs when the two of them went up to the attic to talk.

Which means, as far as Sojiro is concerned, that this is somehow connected to whatever the two of them have been doing together almost every day after Akira gets out of school. 

After Futaba took the runaway girl--Nanako--back to the house, Sojiro had spent some time worrying over what they might have gotten themselves into, and mentally rehearsing how he's going to confront Akira. 

It's while he's doing this that it occurs to him that the name Nanako sounds vaguely familiar.

It takes him a good portion of the afternoon to eventually remember where he's seen it before, but when he finally thinks to look in the paperwork he'd gotten before Akira arrived, there it is. The government likes their official forms, and so of course when Sojiro had been appointed Akira's temporary guardian, they'd given him a thick file that he'd barely skimmed through. The part that had, however, seemed relevant was the information on his arrest and probation. Sojiro had read that at the time, irritated and bitter that he was being asked to take a delinquent into his home, and he'd pulled that probation information out again today.

Under the list of people Akira is banned from having any contact with is a Nanako Dojima, eleven years old.

What had Futaba said, earlier? When she came back down from talking to Nanako, and had asked him if the younger girl could stay for a while?

_She's from some tiny town a few hours away, but she has a brother here, and she ran away from home to come see him._

Sojiro has not asked Akira a lot of questions about where he'd come from, or what his life had been like before Tokyo. But he knows that he'd been staying for the past several years with a family in a small town out on the edge of nowhere, and he's wondering now--for the first time--what exactly those people had come to mean to him. 

Now that Akira's finally come back from _wherever_ he'd been after school, it seems like it's time to confront him about it.

Akira comes downstairs after a few minutes, sans cat, and Sojiro directs him toward the back where he's working on inventory. It's a less than thrilling task, he knows, but one that has to be done to keep the café running more or less smoothly. He's roped Akira into helping a few times before, and so the kid knows what he's supposed to be doing. They work more or less in silence for several minutes, until Sojiro asks, "So did you know she was coming?"

"Did I know who was coming?" Akira asks. He looks up at Sojiro, but his expression isn't overly concerned.

"Nanako," Sojiro says.

The unconcerned expression flips abruptly to panic and then to fear before Akira manages to get himself back under control. 

"I'm not an idiot, Akira," Sojiro says, allowing a hint of his irritation to leak through into his voice. "You know that's a violation of your probation, don't you?"

"Hang on," Akira says, almost tripping over the words in his rush to get them out. "Hang on, I didn't know that she was coming. I had _no idea_."

"But you obviously do now," Sojiro says.

"Because Futaba told me."

"Have you seen her since she got here?" Sojiro asks.

There's a long pause before Akira says anything at all. It's a long enough pause that it basically tells Sojiro that the answer is _yes_. He's obviously trying to find the answer that's going to get him into the least amount of trouble, and maybe puzzling through how much _Sojiro_ knows, and how much to risk lying about based on that. Sojiro gives him as much time as he needs to think, waiting to see what his idea of a good answer is going to be.

If he says that no he hasn't seen her, then he's stupider than Sojiro's been assuming. Sojiro knows that Futaba and Nanako haven't been in the house all afternoon. He'd gone by there earlier, and not even been surprised to find that there was no one around. They'd snuck out while he was busy with Leblanc, and it seems like the only place they would have gone is to meet with Akira.

"Yes," Akira says at last. "I met up with her and Futaba earlier."

"Why."

"Because--" Akira makes a face, his expression a whole mix of different emotions. Sojiro reads anger and guilt and a kind of raw hurt there before Akira's explanation comes bursting out of him. "Because she's been like my _sister_ for five years, and something happened that upset her enough that she ran away from home and came looking for me. And you don't know her but that's completely out of character for her. If she came all the way out here, then I don't care if I'm not allowed to see her, _I'm going to see her_."

His voice gets steadily stronger through this speech, and Sojiro recognizes the same protectiveness on his face that he'd glimpsed the last time he'd confronted Akira. It had been directed at Futaba then, and if anything it's more intense now. 

"Alright, alright," Sojiro says, with a sigh. Akira's protective instinct is, in Sojiro's opinion, one of his better characteristics. But he doesn't want this to turn into an argument because of it. And anyway, even he'd thought that there was something... off, when he saw Nanako for the first time. He can't exactly blame Akira for trying to take care of her when he apparently thinks of her as _family_. "Where did you go to see her?"

"Somewhere that no one would see us together," Akira says, after a brief pause.

Some instinct makes Sojiro hesitate before asking where, exactly, this is. For some reason, he doesn't think he would like the answer.

"Are you going to tell anyone?" Akira asks. "About her being here, and coming to see me?"

"I should," Sojiro says. "This is a violation of your parole, and if someone else finds out about it, and that I _knew_ about it--"

"I know," Akira says. "Trust me, I _know_. But I couldn't just not see her when she was that upset. I know what the consequences are if I get caught breaking the terms of my probation, but some things are more important. And, uh..."

"Yes?" Sojiro prompts.

Akira smiles, slightly sheepishly. "And also, I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to get caught."

Sojiro considers this. 

He has to admit that he thinks Akira is in the right here. The term in his probation that bans him from seeing any of the people he's been living with for the past several years makes sense only in a few specific situations--if they'd been abusive toward him, for example, or if they'd influenced him toward the assault that got him arrested in the first place. Outside of those conditions, it's just... senseless.

(And Sojiro has spent a few restless nights wondering what it would be like if Futaba had been taken away from _him_ )

(Thoughts like that make it a lot harder to understand a contact ban like the one Akira is struggling with)

"I told Futaba that I wanted to meet whoever comes to collect Nanako," he tells Akira. "Who is that going to be?"

"We haven't actually figured that out yet," Akira says. "She has a cousin that lives in the city, so maybe him? Or maybe her dad, because I kind of have a hard time imagining he's _not_ going to want to come straight here to pick her up."

"Good," Sojiro says. "Because I'd like to meet him."

"Uh," Akira says. "I mean--I feel like I should at least _mention_ that he's another person I'm not supposed to see during my probation. Since I was just being lectured about breaking it."

"Then we'll make sure he doesn't come by until after we close up," Sojiro says. "But I'm starting to feel like I don't know what I was getting myself into when you came here, and a conversation with your last guardian might go a long way toward clearing that up."

Akira doesn't meet his eyes.

(He also looks like he's fighting not to _smile_ )

"Okay," Akira says.

"Good," Sojiro says. "Then tell me when you have the time and details figured out."

Akira nods. 

"And in the meantime," he sighs. "Well, there's still all this to finish." He gestures back to the work they'd been doing before the conversation started, because that still needs to get done. 

They finish without saying much more at all, and as soon as they're done, Akira makes a quick escape upstairs.

Sojiro watches him go, feeling a headache starting to build just behind his eyes.

-//-

_May 19_

_Lunchtime_

-//-

Haru hasn't known Akira for very long, but she can tell that there's something on his mind when they meet on the roof again to work on the garden. He's a lot quieter than usual, and his phone--sitting in his bag off to the side with his other things, where they won't get dirty while they work--vibrates almost incessantly throughout the first half hour or so.

It would probably be impolite to ask, especially since she certainly has her own list of things she'd rather not talk about. But eventually curiosity triumphs, and Haru nods in the direction of his phone. "You seem popular today," she says.

"What? Oh." He laughs a little, pushing his hair away from his face and leaving a smear of dirt across the side of his forehead. "Uh... my sister's in town. Kind of unexpectedly. There's a lot going on."

"I didn't realize you had a sister," Haru says.

"I don't. I mean--she's kind of a sister. We grew up together, we're just not..." he waves a hand in a gesture that sums everything up as _it's complicated._ "Sorry. I can mute my phone, I know it's pretty distracting."

"It's fine," Haru assures him. "Is your sister in town for long?"

"It kind of depends," Akira says. "She... sort of ran away from home so everyone's trying to coordinate getting her back again. That's what all the texts are about, actually."

"Oh!" And this would probably be a good time to stop asking personal questions, actually, except that Haru is, if anything, even _more_ curious. And Akira would stop her if the questions bothered him, wouldn't he? "Is--she alright?"

"Yeah," Akira says. "Honestly there was some stuff going on at her school, but now that she's told us about it, we can do something to help."

"That's good to hear," Haru says. "Do you--"

The door leading to the stairs opens just then, and someone says, "Excuse me, but do either of you have permission to be up here?"

The question is polite enough, but Haru flushes anyway at the slightly stern undertone. She looks up to see Makoto Niijima--recognizable because of her role of student council president, although she and Haru have never shared a class in their three years at Shujin--standing just on this side of the now open door. 

"We do, actually," Haru says, standing and reaching for her bag. "We're restarting the gardening club. I have a slip from my homeroom teacher."

She hands it over to Makoto, who takes it, looking slightly self conscious about the whole process. She's trying to hide it, but Haru is the kind of person who gets nervous when _other_ people are nervous, and there is some definite nervous tension in the air now.

"I'm sorry about this," Makoto says, handing the paper back to Haru after scanning quickly through it. "I know it's a little... out of the ordinary. But Principal Kobayakawa has asked me to help look into that prank with the calling cards."

"The Phantom Thieves?" Haru asks. Akira, who is still crouched on the ground next to their plants, goes very still. Haru notices it out of the corner of her eye, and thinks that he must be as curious about the Phantom Thieves as everyone else at school is. 

"Yes," Makoto agrees. "The Phantom Thieves, exactly."

Most of the school is still talking about the Phantom Thieves, and Haru has listened to as much of it as she can with rapt attention. It might be a little bit childish, but there's something about even the _name_ that has a certain romance to it. And if it's true, as a lot of people are saying, that the Phantom Thieves really _had_ stolen Kamoshida's heart and forced him to confess?

Then--

Well, she's just interested in how that would work. That's all.

(There's certainly nothing personal in it)

"Do you have any leads?" Haru asks.

"Not yet," Makoto admits. "I only just started looking into things today. I thought that since the roof is off limits, it might be exactly the kind of place that the people that planted those cards might spend their time."

"We've been up here during lunch over the past few days," Akira says, adding himself to the conversation for the first time. "We haven't seen anyone suspicious. Right, Haru?"

"That's true," Haru agrees. "But I'm sure that if you need any help with the rest of your investigation, we'd be happy to pitch in." Because then, at least, she might have a chance at actually learning who these Phantom Thieves are. And she's much too curious to pass up that opportunity.

"Uh," Akira says. 

"Are you sure?" Makoto asks.

"Three heads are better than one," Haru points out, ignoring the fact that both of them are looking at her now with undisguised skepticism. 

"I'm not sure that would be a good idea," Makoto says, and Haru does not miss the slightly worried look she shoots in Akira's directions.

"If this is about all those... unpleasant rumors going around about Akira," Haru says. "It's worth pointing out that _most_ of them seem like they were started by Kamoshida. And we know how much his opinion is worth now, don't we?"

"That's true," Makoto says, relaxing slightly. 

"Akira's been perfectly nice to me since we met," Haru adds. 

"Alright," Makoto says. "I'm sorry, you're right. Of course if you want to help, I wouldn't say no. To both of you." She adds this last part directly to Akira.

"Hang on a second," Akira says. "I never said that I _did_ want to help out with this."

"It'll be fun," Haru assures him. "We can meet during lunch to talk and compare leads. Would that work for you, Makoto?"

"It sounds workable," Makoto agrees.

"Then it's perfect," Haru says. "We can even talk while we're working on the gardening, Akira, so it won't take up any extra time."

Akira says nothing, but his expression is... less enthusiastic than Haru would have expected, and she hesitates. Maybe she's pushing this too hard? Maybe Akira is the only person in school that _doesn't_ care about the Phantom Thieves, and what they'd done to Kamoshida.

"Is there some specific reason you don't want to help?" Makoto asks him. And it seems like an innocent enough question to Haru, but Akira flushes very slightly, then appears to give in under the weight of Makoto's raised eyebrows and searching look.

"No," he says. "It--there's no real reason. It sounds like a good idea, actually."

He still doesn't sound convinced, and Haru hesitates for a second, torn between smoothing over the awkward moment, or giving him a chance to back out. In the end, she goes for the first choice. He _had_ said yes in the end, after all. "So that's decided, then," she says. "I suppose we should do introductions? My name is Haru Okumura. This is Akira Kurusu."

"Makoto Niijima," Makoto says.

So Makoto joins them in front of the garden plot, and--with some encouragement--joins them in working on the plants. They don't have much time to talk about the Phantom Thieves before it's time to head back for the afternoon classes (to Haru's disappointment), but Makoto promises to come back again soon, and Haru is in an unusually good mood as she heads downstairs.

Akira stops her when they get to the second year floor, before they go their separate ways. "Haru," he says. "I..."

"Yes?" she says.

There's a long pause before he eventually shakes his head. "Nothing," he says. "It's--nothing."

-//-

> **Phantom Thieves**
> 
> **Ryuji:** Yo, anyone else hear that rumor about the student council prez trying to find us?
> 
> **Ann:** I did! She actually asked me some questions during lunch
> 
> **Ryuji:** About what???
> 
> **Ann:** I had Morgana with me while Akira was doing his gardening club thing, and I think she heard me talking to him
> 
> **Ann:** I keep forgetting that just because people can't hear him, it doesn't mean they can't hear me :(
> 
> I may have been drafted into helping her
> 
> **Ryuji:** How, Akira???
> 
> Haru was very enthusiastic about volunteering us when Makoto came to investigate the roof
> 
> Apparently it's the kind of place a bunch of delinquent Phantom Thieves might hang out
> 
> **Ann:** It's a good thing we only met up there the one time, then :(
> 
> **Ryuji:** This is good though, right? If you're helping her, you can make sure she doesn't get close to us!
> 
> I guess?
> 
> It just feels kind of weird to be lying to Haru when she's been nice
> 
> **Ann:** Yeah, that makes sense :( Maybe she'll lose interest?
> 
> **Akira:** I hope so

-//-

_May 19_

_After School_

-//-

Nanako has talked to her dad three times since she came back to the Sakura house with Futaba--once to tell him that she's still alive and okay and where she is, a second time, later, after Akira told her that Sojiro wants to meet her dad, and a third time this morning to coordinate details of time and place.

He doesn't sound too mad, which is... probably not actually as good as it sounds. Nanako is pretty sure that when he gets over being relieved that she's okay, he's going to be really mad that she ran away, and possibly _also_ angry that she hadn't told him what was going on earlier. She'd _run away to Tokyo_ , which even Akira has never done, unless you count that one time they'd been kidnapped into the TV World, and Lavenza had given him a way out that went to Tokyo instead of Inaba.

She's pretty sure that this is different. Akira had been trying to get help to be able to rescue _her_. Nanako had just... not wanted to be at home anymore.

So all that those three relatively short phone conversations with her dad had done is make her worry about what's going to happen when he finally gets here tonight. And she is _good_ at worrying, which means that her day is going less than great until Futaba tells her that the Phantom Thieves are going to a Palace after the rest of them get out of school this afternoon, and does she want to come with them.

"Can I?" Nanako asks, distracted immediately by this idea. "Would that actually be okay? I haven't even _met_ everyone."

"Well, Ann was a little worried about you being too young when the idea came up the first time," Futaba admits. "But Akira sent her a whole list of people that started fighting Shadows younger, and then Yusuke pointed out that if you don't come with us, you might not get a chance for a while, even though you _just_ got your Persona, and nobody thought that would be fair."

It really wouldn't be, even though Nanako knows she always has access to the TV World while she lives in Inaba. But since she's not a fighter, that would mean finding other people to go with her, and all the Persona-users back home are older than her and busy with work. Her odds of getting to use her Persona any time soon after she leaves Tokyo are actually pretty low.

"Thank you," she says.

"No big deal." Futaba waves it away.

"It is," Nanako insists. "And it's not just the Palace, it's... you've been really helpful since I got here. Since before then, actually. I... don't have a lot of friends back home, so, um... thank you."

There's a brief pause.

"I never really made friends that easily either," Futaba says at last. "Not until this year. And then Akira showed up and changed everything. So now I have him up the street, and the Phantom Thieves, and when you started texting, I didn't think that I couldn't--handle it."

They look at each other across Futaba's bedroom, and just before the silence can start to get awkward, Nanako says, "So are we _allowed_ to go meet everyone else so we can get to the Palace, or are we going to have to sneak out?"

"We should probably sneak out," Futaba says. "Sojiro might get kind of weird if he thinks I'm dragging you all over the city. Are you okay with sneaking around?"

"I've lived with Akira for five years," Nanako says. "We've done _plenty_ of sneaking around."

Futaba grins at this, and they start packing things up for the trip into the Palace. The sneaking out part is pretty easy, since Sojiro isn't even in the house, and then they're out on the street and heading for the station where they can catch the train to Shibuya. It's the same train they'd taken yesterday to get to Mementos, but Nanako hadn't been paying much attention to the route then. She sticks close to Futaba, and they get to the accessway where they're supposed to meet the rest of the Phantom Thieves without any problems.

There's nobody else there yet, so Futaba pulls out her laptop and starts tapping away at something, and Nanako leans against the railing to watch the rush of the city below them. The traffic and bustle of the pedestrians is almost hypnotizing, and Nanako is so caught up in it that she doesn't realize anyone has joined them until someone nearby says, "You're Nanako, right?"

She starts a little bit and turns around, to realize that there's a blonde, older boy now leaning against the railing a few feet away.

"Yeah," she says. "And you're--" Akira and Futaba have both told her about the other Phantom Thieves, and there's only one guy in the group that she doesn't know. "You're Ryuji, right?"

"Yep!" he grins, and even though there's something just a _little_ bit intimidating about the way he looks, the smile shatters any nervousness Nanako might have felt. He reminds her of Kanji, kind of. A tough guy that's not really all that tough. "Akira told us you've been having a hard time at home," he says.

"Mostly at school," Nanako tells him. "But I think it's going to get better from now on."

"Hey," Futaba says, looking up from her laptop. "Ryuji. Isn't Ann with you?"

"She's getting the metaverse stuff from Akira," Ryuji says. "All the medicines and everything. And, you know. Morgana."

"Why didn't you stay and help?" Futaba asks.

"Uh--"

" _Ryuji_ ," Futaba says, shaking her head in disappointment.

They argue about this for a while, and Nanako half listens until she spots Yusuke heading toward the group. He's walking with a blonde girl that Nanako assumes is Ann, since she can see Morgana poking his head out of her bag.

She feels _very_ young for a second, surrounded by the Phantom Thieves. Or most of the Phantom Thieves, anyway.

(Poor Akira)

But she steels herself against feeling like she doesn't deserve to be here, because there's no reason she _shouldn't_ be. When she was six and Akira was eleven, she'd never thought there was any reason why he couldn't do what everyone else could. She's as old now as he had been then, and there's no reason in the world that she can't do this.

"Hello, Nanako," Yusuke says when he and Ann have joined the rest of them. "I heard about what happened yesterday, and it sounds like I should be congratulating you?"

Nanako smiles. She likes that he's heard about everything that she's been going through lately, and the part that stuck out to him as the most important was the _getting a Persona_ part of it. "Thank you," she says.

"You're Nanako?" Ann asks. 

"That's me," she says. "And you're Ann, right?" 

Ann, according to Futaba, had been the one that was most worried about Nanako being too young to come into the Palace with the Phantom Thieves. Nanako does her best to stand up straight and look as old as she can.

But Ann doesn't seem at all upset to find her there, so Nanako thinks that maybe Akira had been _really_ convincing when he made his case for her earlier. She doesn't say anything about how Nanako should be left behind (and neither does anyone else) while the group kind of checks in with each other and gets ready for the trip to the Palace. Yusuke takes out his phone, opens the app, and a few seconds later the world melts away around them. When it solidifies again, everything is different. 

Nanako feels her eyes go wide behind her mask.

(She has a _mask_ )

"This isn't anything like Mementos," she says. It's not anything like the TV World either, but Nanako had expected _that_. But in her head she's been picturing the Palaces as just slightly more themed versions of what she'd seen yesterday in Mementos. This is... very much not that.

"That place is _so_ creepy," Ann says with a little shiver.

"So is this place," Yusuke points out.

"No kidding," Ryuji says. "You guys all ready to get going on it so we can be _done_ with it?"

And everyone is, so in they go. Nanako stays in the back with Futaba, since neither of them is going to be fighting, and for a little while everything goes smoothly. This early part of the museum is obviously an area the rest of the group has already been through, so they're able to skirt around the most dangerous areas and head straight for the part of the Palace that they still have to finish. 

Nanako has spent her whole life--or at least, her whole life since she was six years old--memorizing and recording the way that Shadows work. Without ever getting to be on the front line, she's spent her time thinking about and trying to understand the way that they work. Everything is just--so much easier now. When she helps them pick their way through the Palace now, she feels like she's doing something she's been waiting her whole life for.

It takes a little bit of time for her and Futaba to work out a way for both of them to help without stepping on each other's toes. But their Persona aren't exactly the same, and there are was that both of them _can_ help in the same fight. Both of their Persona have pretty much the same ability to scan and analyze the Shadows they run into, but beyond that, there's differences. Futaba has Necronomicon, and most of what she can do helps the party by either making them stronger--Futaba calls them buffs--or with gradual healing. Nanako, as she gradually realizes during their trip through the Palace, as she gets to know her Persona, has a different kind of focus.

Murasaki Shikibu has a tendency to focus on the same kinds of things that Nanako has always honed in on while learning about Shadows. Weaknesses, strengths, attacks--things like that. Maybe it's because Nanako has always paid so much attention to those things that her Persona does too, or maybe that's just the way things would have turned out anyway. Either way, though, her Persona tells her not _just_ what the Shadows' weaknesses are--she thinks that part is pretty standard, for navigation type Persona--but also how to _use_ them.

During Shadow fights, when her Persona swoops out around her to surround her with pages, those pages are filled with the information she needs, about whatever Shadow the rest of the party is fighting. Which is fascinating and cool but not all that surprising, until one fight when a Shadow tries to hit Yusuke with _agi,_ which is fire and the element he's weak to, and Murasaki Shikibu reaches out to _block_ it.

Or not _block_ , Nanako realizes, because the fire doesn't fade away. Instead it burns around the edges of her Persona, not _hurting_ it but filling the space between Nanako and her Persona with the borrowed energy. It doesn't hurt--it isn't even all that warm, really--but it's there. 

(At least until Nanako realizes that she can release it, sending it back at a _different_ Shadow like an attack of her own)

(And Nanako likes that she has a navigation type Persona, that she's able to see so much of the Shadows and understand them--but after five years it _also_ feels pretty good to be able to help in some small way in the fight)

They make good time through the museum, until finally they come to an area that seems different from everywhere else they've been so far. It's a kind of outdoor courtyard, with a door in front of them that completely blocks their progress.

"What are we supposed to do now?" Ryuji asks, as the group huddles up in front of the door. 

"I think we need to do something in the real world to get past this," Futaba says, her hand up to her goggles as she studies the door. 

"That makes sense," Morgana says, looking up at the door with his arms crossed over his chest. "If there's something in Madarame's cognition that he thinks _can't_ be opened--it makes sense that he'd have something in his Palace that would mimic that."

"There's a door that looks a lot like this at home," Yusuke says thoughtfully. "I... don't think I _have_ ever seen it open. I know that I've never been inside."

"There's a room in the house that you live in that you've _never_ been inside?" Nanako asks.

"Yes," Yusuke agrees.

"And you've never even been curious?"

"It's always just been there," Yusuke admits.

Nanako bites back a smile as she says, "I think Akira would be _really_ disappointed if he knew that."

"He probably would have broken in immediately," Yusuke agrees. "But Sensei has always been a little bit... strange about that room."

"Definitely sounds fishy," Futaba says. "So--that's what we have to do? Get inside the room in the real world?"

"And have Madarame _see_ that we can do it," Morgana says. "That should change his cognition enough for him to believe that the door in his Palace can open too."

"Well that sounds like it's not going to be a fun time," Ann says with a sigh. "But if we have to do that before we can get past the door here in the Palace, I guess this is as far as we're going to get today."

And although everyone else seems reluctant to give up and go home for the day, the general feeling is that there's nothing else they _can_ do. One at a time, they turn around and head back the way they'd come.

-//-

_May 19_

_Evening_

-//-

Since Akira can't be in the Palace, he instead hangs around Leblanc most of the afternoon, waiting for news about how things had gone with the rest of the group. It's a slightly awkward place to spend his time, since Sojiro clearly still has his feathers ruffled about all the sneaking around they'd done with Nanako after she got to the city. But there's also a fairly regular trickle of customers coming through the café, for once, and Akira gets roped into helping so that keeps him busy.

A little after 7:00 he starts getting texts from the Phantom Thieves group chat.

> **Phantom Thieves**
> 
> **Futaba:** We're back in the real world! Everyone's okay, Nanako did good, me and her and Mona are coming back to Yongen-Jaya now
> 
> **Yusuke:** We did run into a problem while we were in there
> 
> **Ryuji:** Yeah, there's this door in the Palace that we can't get to unless we can get it open in the real world
> 
> **Yusuke:** Akira, you've been in the atelier before. Do you remember the door that has a peacock painted on it?
> 
> I think so...?
> 
> **Yusuke:** No one is allowed in that room, so apparently we can't get through those doors in the Palace, either
> 
> What's in that room?
> 
> **Yusuke:** I don't know, no one's allowed inside
> 
> Yeah, but you've never gotten curious and broken in?
> 
> **Yusuke:** No
> 
> Yusuke :(
> 
> I'm so disappointed
> 
> **Futaba:** lol
> 
> ??
> 
> **Futaba:** That's exactly what Nanako said you would say :p

"Hey," Sojiro calls, and Akira turns around to look at him. "Come back here and give me a hand."

So Akira sticks his phone back in his pocket, and the next half hour or so pass pretty quickly. Futaba texts him again to say that she and Nanako are back in the Sakura house with Morgana, which helps Akira relax a little bit. He hadn't been too worried (he tells himself), but it's just better that they're all home again.

And, once he stops worrying about the others getting home, he's able to start worrying about the impeding arrival of Dojima. 

Leblanc closes at the usual time, and a few minutes after that, Futaba and Nanako come over with Morgana, and Akira joins them at the booth farthest from the door (after giving them a quick look--are they okay after the Palace trip? They both look okay) so that they can put their heads together and whisper. Nanako is full of excitement about her first trip into the metaverse with her Persona, which Akira definitely isn't upset about, even though the rest of them have to keep shushing her when she gets excited and her voice gets high and a little bit too loud. 

(He's upset that he hadn't been there with her, but that's _Madarame's_ fault, not Nanako's)

Eventually, though, the conversation turns away from the Palace and onto Dojima.

"Dad texted me while we were in the Palace," Nanako says. "I saw it when we got out--he's going to be here by about 8:30."

"So how is this conversation going to go?" Morgana asks. "This is the guy that raised you, right Akira?"

"Pretty much," Akira says, after a brief pause. Technically he's only known Dojima for five years. For the two thirds of his life before that, he'd lived with his parents, like pretty much any other kid. It's just that the last third has been so crazy and different that sometimes it _feels_ like he's been part of that family for much longer.

"So what do you think?" Morgana asks again. "How's it going to go?"

"I have no idea," Akira says immediately.

"Well you're the only one that really knows both of them," Futaba points out.

"I've known Sojiro _barely_ two months," Akira says. "I mean, I definitely know Dojima, but I don't know enough about how Sojiro handles stuff like this to guess what he's going to say."

"That doesn't help," Futaba tells him.

"Trust me," Akira says. "I know. I've been worrying about this most of the day." He has no idea what any of his teachers had lectured about in school--he hadn't been able to stop thinking about the fact that Dojima is going to meet his temporary guardian tonight. It's going to be incredibly awkward, and if things go wrong there's a _big_ chance that life at Leblanc is going to get more complicated, and--

And he really just wants to see Dojima again. It wakes up something scared and trembling inside him that had built up over the days he spent under arrest, before being released to Sojiro's charge in Toyo. Akira hasn't let himself think about it since he first came to Tokyo, because there are other things to worry about, the Phantom Thieves and Lavenza and just _absolutely everything._ But there's a part of him that really just wants to see Dojima again.

(And that's the part of him that makes it easier to tell Morgana that _yes_ , Dojima is the man that had raised him)

"I think Dad's going to kill me," Nanako says glumly. 

"He's just going to be relieved you're okay," Akira assures her. "And probably worried that you're going to start running around doing stupid things like me and Yu now that you have a Persona."

"I'm grounded until middle school," Nanako says, sliding down on her seat. And then suddenly her eyes go wide, she half slides and half jumps out of the booth, and goes running toward Leblanc's door. Akira hears it opening and turns just in time to see Nanako reach her dad just as he gets inside the cafe.

She hugs him tightly, and he gives her the kind of look that says he's checking to make sure that she really is all in one piece.

"Guess that's him," Morgana says. 

"Yep," Akira says, standing up and trying to sound casual.

"Doesn't look like she needed to be all that worried," Futaba says, as the hug between Nanako and her dad continues for several more seconds.

"Akira," Dojima calls when it finally ends, and Akira's feet start moving pretty much without any input from him. He can feel Dojima giving him the same _is he still in one piece_ look that Nanako had just been subjected to. It's slightly more exasperated when it's pointed at him than when it had been directed at Nanako, but that's fair. 

"You're doing okay?" Dojima asks. "Staying out of trouble?" He puts a hand on Akira's shoulder, pulling him into a half hug just for a second or two, and Akira gives him a lopsided but genuine grin.

"Uh," he says. His mind flashes to the rumors (still) going around school about him, about being drafted into the student council president's anti-Phantom Thief initiative, about the working theory that an injured Lavenza is somewhere at the very bottom of Mementos, about Madarame hating him so much that Akira can't even set foot there. "Maybe a little?"

Dojima gives him a _please don't make me worry about you any more than I already am_ look, and in the face of that familiar expression, it is suddenly much harder for Akira to keep from thinking how much he just wants to go home. He half turns because he's kind of having a hard time keeping his emotions off his face.

As he turns he makes accidental eye contact with Sojiro, still standing behind the counter and watching them all, and remembers that _oh yeah_ , this is a whole conversation that still needs to happen. "So," he says. "Um. This is Ryotaro Dojima--Nanako's dad. And..." He turns back to Dojima, gesturing to Sojiro. "This is Sojiro Sakura." 

And it's time to see how bad, exactly, this conversation is going to go.

-//-

_May 19_

_Evening_

-//-

Sojiro watches the kids--Futaba and Akira and Nanako--and the way that they huddle together at a table in the back to whisper things they obviously don't want him to hear. He watches the way Akira looks at the two girls, like he's checking to make sure they're both fine, and how he relaxes when he sees that they are. He watches the way all three of them talk like they've known each other for months.

And then he watches the man that comes to the door and is enthusiastically greeted by Nanako. He watches Akira join them, his usual cool demeanor absolutely gone as he reunites with his family.

(Definitely his family, Sojiro realizes. For all that he doesn't look anything like the other two, for all that Sojiro knows this kid's story and what had happened to his parents, _this_ is what a family looks like)

He lets them have a few seconds together, and would have let them take more time than that, if Akira hadn't looked in his direction and apparently remembered him for the first time.

"It's a relief to finally meet you," Dojima says. "I have to admit." He heads over to take a seat at the counter, while behind him Akira gives Nanako a significant look, and the two of them retreat back to their earlier seats to listen in with Futaba. 

"A relief," Sojiro repeats. For the moment at least, he decides to ignore the obviously interested audience sitting in the corner of the room (even the _cat_ is staring in their direction like he wants to know what's going to happen). There isn't exactly anywhere he can send them except for upstairs to Akira's room, and he's sure they would be able to listen in just as well from up there. 

"I had no idea where Akira was for months," Dojima says flatly. "So yes, I'm relieved to know where he is and who he's been staying with."

Sojiro nods. He'd have felt absolutely beside himself if Futaba was ever taken away from him and brought to someplace that he couldn't find her. But he knows, of course, that he would do anything to keep his adopted daughter safe and happy. He still doesn't know what kind of a person Ryotaro Dojima is, and considering how things here have gone since Akira moved in, the man's character seems suddenly and extremely relevant.

"Listen," Dojima says. "I understand that you're in a tough situation here. I don't know the full story from your side, but I doubt that you were all that enthusiastic about having to take in another kid for the year."

"Well," Sojiro says. The truth, of course, is that Akira would not be here at all if child services hadn't threatened to take Futaba away. "I won't pretend that I was expecting him here this year, but he's not too bad of a kid."

"You hear that?" Futaba snarks under her breath at Akira. "You're _not too bad_ , apparently."

"I'll take it," Akira says, and Nanako laughs behind her hand. 

Sojiro is starting to regret the fact that he hadn't sent the kids upstairs after all. They'd still be able to listen in from up there, but at least he and Dojima wouldn't be able to hear the commentary.

"He grows on you eventually," Dojima says. "I'm not sure how exactly, but it happens."

"Thanks," Akira calls.

"Stop it," Nanako says, very obviously trying not to smile, and failing. "You _know_ you're trouble."

Akira does absolutely nothing to deny this, and instead looks worryingly proud of the accusation.

Sojiro sighs.

Dojima turns around. "Akira," he says. "Is there anywhere you can take Nanako and..." he hesitates, either not knowing or not remembering Futaba's name.

"Futaba," she says, with a little wave. "Um. Hi."

"Futaba," Dojima repeats. "It's nice to meet you. Akira?"

"Yeah," Akira says. "We can go upstairs." 

There's some shuffling and a little bit more whispering, and then a small stampede as all three of the kids go running up to the attic. 

"You know they're listening up there," Sojiro says.

"Probably," Dojima says with a sigh. "But it's better than nothing." He turns his attention back to Sojiro, and for a moment or two, they study each other in the silence of the now empty room.

Sojiro speaks first. "So," he says. "I've been wondering. Did you actually know about the kid's situation? With his parents."

"Of course," Dojima says. "Akira's been with us since 2011, and he was not as good of a liar back then as he thought he was."

"And you didn't think about reporting him to anyone?" Sojiro asks. "I've heard Akira say you're with the police. I would have thought there was a process for something like this."

"I thought about it," Dojima says. "And I was going to do it." His expression is wry. 

"Obviously you didn't," Sojiro points out. "So what changed your mind?"

"A few things," Dojima says. "I looked into the systems that would be responsible for him if I reported what happened, and I realized that it would crush Akira. They're overloaded and understaffed, and so caught up in paperwork that things slip through the cracks."

Sojiro nods. He'd experienced the same thing after Wakaba died. 

"I couldn't do that to him," Dojima says. "Not after--"

And he stops. It's a brief slip, but Sojiro sees. There's something that he's not being told.

"That year was rough on everyone," Dojima says. "And Akira started to fit in. We got through that year, and Akira was a part of that. I wasn't going to send him away." He sighs, and rubs at the side of his head, apparently thinking. "I'm not telling you this because I like talking about it. I'm telling you because I want you to know that I didn't let Akira stay with us for the past five years because of some kind of whim. There's nothing in the world tying Akira to our family officially. But he belongs with us, and we're not going to let go of him."

The message between the words is blindingly clear--not _quite_ a threat, exactly. Just a promise that if Sojiro is planning on being a deficient guardian while he has Akira under his roof, he's not going to enjoy the consequences.

Sojiro does not feel threatened by this. Instead, he feels a sense of satisfaction--in his opinion, this feels like exactly the correct reaction, given the fact that there's nothing else Dojima can do for his kid right now.

"I understand," he tells the other man. "And your kid will be safe here until his probation's over."

"Good," Dojima says. "I'm glad to hear that." He stands, and adds, "And thanks for looking out for Nanako when she showed up here."

"Of course."

Dojima starts to take a step toward the stairs, apparently ready to call his daughter down, and then he stops. Hesitates, and then turns back. "Listen," he says. "I should leave you with my number."

"I'm sure Akira has it," Sojiro says, as Dojima fishes a business card out of his jacket.

"He does," Dojima says. "But there might be a time when he's in too much trouble to call me myself."

"What makes you say that?" Sojiro asks.

"Because that kid attracts trouble like nobody I've ever known," Dojima says. "He has the best intentions, always, but... things have a way of spiraling out of control. If you haven't seen that for yourself yet, you will."

Sojiro raises his eyebrows, but accepts the business card when Dojima hands it over. He's thinking of the discovery that Futaba and Akira had been running around making friends behind his back, and how it had helped her more than anything he's tried in two years. _Trouble_ , but the best of intentions. "Alright," he says. "If anything comes up, I'll let you know."

"Thanks," Dojima says. "I appreciate it." Taking a step back and raising his voice, he calls, "Nanako!"

She comes down so quickly that there's no doubt whatsoever that she's been standing with the other two at the top of the stairs, listening. Futaba and Akira follow a couple steps behind.

"Are we leaving already, Dad?" she asks.

"Yeah," he says. "The last train back to Inaba has already left for the night, so we're staying the night at a hotel and leaving in the morning. And when we get home, we _will_ be talking about your running away from home and coming all the way to Tokyo." Nanako reaches the bottom of the stairs, and they hug, briefly. "And we'll _also_ be talking about your teacher," he adds, more quietly. "Everything's going to be okay."

"I know," Nanako says. "Thanks, Dad."

Dojima looks up at Akira. "And make sure you take care of yourself, okay? Until we see each other again."

Akira nods. "I will," he says. "Until... whenever that is."

"Hang in there," Dojima tells him quietly. "We'll get you home."

Dojima and Nanako leave not too long after that, and Futaba goes back to the house. Akira hovers around the cafe for a while, obviously distracted and at loose ends. Morgana trails around after him.

Sojiro watches the homesick kid and his cat for a while, until finally he can't stand it any longer. "Kid," he says, the next time Akira's restless wandering brings him close.

Akira pulls up short and looks at him.

"He seemed like a decent guy," Sojiro says. "Not like the kind of people I had to get Futaba away from after Wakaba passed."

"Not at _all_ ," Akira says.

"No," Sojiro agrees. "And--well, I'm getting the feeling you were going to do this anyway. But if you're going to keep in contact with him and Nanako this year, you don't need to worry that I'm going to report that to your parole officer, or anything like that. It seems like you probably should be doing that."

It looks like there's a weight suddenly lifted off Akira's shoulders, and he lets out a breath of relief before he says, "Thank you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whooooo that was a hard chapter to write xD Dojima and Sojiro meeting was especially something that felt like it could have gone VERY wrong, so I'm glad it didn't lol
> 
> Also, I was hoping to have something ready to share with you guys with this update on Nanako's Shadow/what abilities it has/how it works considering she has a bond with both Yu and Akira, in different arcana, one of which (Yu's) was already maxed out before she ever got her Persona. Unfortunately I still don't have it 100% worked out, but I hopefully will by the next time Nanako is back in the story.


	16. May 20-May 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note before getting into the chapter: I wanted to give you guys a head's up that I got promoted at work a little while ago, which is great except that it's probably going to mean some longer hours and less time to write. I'm definitely still going to aim for weekly updates, and hopefully updates won't be slowing down much (or at all!) but there might be some weekends where I just can't get anything posted.

_May 20_

_After School_

-//-

Akira is in a strange mood after school lets out on Friday.

There's something sharp inside his chest that hasn't completely faded after saying goodbye to Dojima and Nanako last night, so there's that. He'd also spent lunch with Haru and Makoto up on the roof, mostly listening while the two of them talk about how to track down him and his friends. Literally the _only_ reassuring thing about that had been the fact that neither of them has any idea where to start. Both of them have been asking around to see if anyone had spotted anyone putting the cards up, and of course no one had (because he and Ann and Ryuji had been _careful_ ).

And now he's supposed to be heading for Shibuya and a meeting with the rest of the Thieves to figure out how to get past the door in Madarame's Palace. Except Yusuke apparently had been asked to stay after school by one of his teachers to talk about the fact that he's been distracted during class for weeks now, and his grades are starting to suffer, and without him there's really no point trying to figure out a plan for getting through the real world door.

So the planning meeting has been postponed, and Akira is left with nothing to do after class except worry over all the nervous energy he doesn't seem like he's able to shake.

He's standing in Shibuya Station, trying to decide whether there's anything he needs to do, or if he should just go home for the day, when his phone rings. He glances down at it, is vaguely surprised to see that there's no incoming number, but answers anyway on the off-chance that it might be Futaba.

(Calling in a way that doesn't make her number show up on his phone _would_ be the kind of thing she'd do)

Instead, the voice that he hears on the other end is Caroline's.

"Inmate!" she says. "What are you doing today?"

He has to pause a second to mentally rearrange a few things in his brain before he can even figure out what to say.

Caroline has a cell phone? Or maybe she has a way of calling him _without_ a cell phone, since it had come up as a blank number? And never mind _how_ she's calling him, there's also the question of _why_ she's calling.

"Uh," he says, when he realizes that he has to actually answer her question at some point. "I'm doing... nothing, I guess?"

"Well now you are," Caroline informs him. "You're going to come and talk to us."

"What about?" Akira asks, still slightly stuck on the fact that she's calling him, on his actual cell phone.

(Then again, he's using an app to get to the metaverse these days, so who even knows)

There's a brief pause, and then Caroline says, "You... you told Justine that you could tell us about other people you know from the Velvet Room." Her voice is suddenly lower, and Akira has to press the phone more tightly against his ear to make out what she's saying "So you're going to do that. Today."

"Oh!" Akira says. With everything else that's happened, he'd kind of forgotten that conversation. But yeah, actually--that is something he's been meaning to do. "Sure, yeah. We can meet up somewhere and talk." 

"Outside the Velvet Room," Caroline says, and then hangs up. Akira pulls his phone away from his ear and stares down at it.

Well... at least he has something to do with his afternoon, now. 

He's not far from the Velvet Room door on Central Street, so he leaves the station and heads there, weaving his way through the crowds of people that always seem to throng this part of the city. The crowds don't clear until he turns off the main road and down the side alley that leads to both the Velvet Room and Untouchable.

Both of the twins are standing outside the door, very obviously waiting for him. "Hey," he says. "So I'm guessing since you guys are both out here, that you don't want to talk inside the Velvet Room?"

"It might not be a good idea to have this conversation there," Justine says.

"Why not?" Akira asks. "I mean, I'm not going to complain about not having to spend time in there--" Not as long as being in the Velvet Room means being locked up as a prisoner again. "But what makes it such a bad idea for you two?"

They exchange a look.

"Nothing," Caroline says.

"We would just prefer not to bother our master with pointless conversations like this," Justine says.

There's something in her expression that Akira thinks, for a second, is nervousness.

And then he realizes that it's fear.

"You don't think he'd like you knowing more?" he asks, genuinely surprised. Igor hasn't exactly seemed _friendly_ this year, and... well, if Akira's being honest, there's definitely a part of him that's a little bit afraid of him. But he would have figured that the twins at least wouldn't have a reason to be afraid. They're not the ones that have screwed up and gotten themselves locked behind bars. They're on Igor's side, right?

"It will just be easier this way," Justine says, and Akira teeters uncertainly between letting the question drop, or pushing harder. He's not sure if there's anything he could even do to help them if there _is_ something wrong between them and Igor, but it feels like it would be wrong not to try. But on the other hand, if they don't want to tell him, pushing might just make them decide to stop talking to him altogether. And however distant and intimidating Igor has been to him, the twins have at least been warming up.

"Okay," he says. "So--" Where is he supposed to take two Velvet Room attendants to talk here in Tokyo? Back in Inaba, he and Lavenza had spent all their time either in the TV World or wandering aimlessly around the town's neighborhoods. Tokyo is different, it's _harder_ to find places that are private enough for the kind of conversation Akira thinks this one is going to turn into. What's he supposed to do? Take them home with him? He doesn't really want to have to try and explain them to Sojiro. After everything that's happened in the last couple days, he thinks that any other weird things might be pushing it a little too far.

"There's a diner up the street," he tells the twins at last. "We can get something to eat while we talk."

Tokyo is a big place, and sometimes a strange place, and the three of them don't make for a particularly strange sight in this area. It kind of relaxes him a little bit, when he realizes that no one else seems to think that there's anything weird about the three of them. So they get a booth at the diner, the twins sitting on one side and Akira on the other. Akira orders the first thing he sees on the menu, just to make sure they won't get kicked out for not buying anything. When it comes, he looks across at the twins. 

"So what do you want to know?" he asks.

"You can start by telling us what you know about the other people like us," Caroline says. "Other people from the Velvet Room."

"Sure," Akira says. He pauses, to collect his thoughts and figure out how to start. He doesn't get a chance to say anything, though, before Justine pipes up with a question.

"Your friend is a wild card as well, isn't he?" she asks. "He's been in a Velvet Room before. Is that where you met others like us?"

"You mean Yu?" Akira asks. "Yeah, partly. When he was a guest of the Velvet Room, the attendant that helped him was called Margaret, and--"

"What was she like?" Caroline interrupts.

"Uh..." He considers. "I only really met her a few times. But she was really put together, all the time. I think she was kind of the responsible one, you know? Whenever I saw any of the attendants together, she was always the one that seemed like she was trying to hold things together."

He pauses, half expecting another interruption. But both of them are quiet, watching him intently. So Akira continues.

"She was really... professional, all the time," he says. "And then there was Elizabeth, who was the complete opposite--"

Now Caroline _does_ interrupt, again. "Not professional at all?" she asks.

"I think she was a little bit crazy, to be honest" Akira says. "Not in a bad way. I don't think? But she was just..." He thinks back to the summer when he'd met Elizabeth, during the P-1 Tournament. How does he even start to describe her? "I think she had something important she needed to do," he says. "But she left the Velvet Room to do it, and it definitely seemed like that was something she wasn't supposed to do. Everyone else acted like it was a really big deal."

"I think it would be," Justine says thoughtfully. 

"Where else would there even be to _go_?" Caroline asks.

"You don't think you would ever want leave?" Akira asks. As far as he knows, Elizabeth is the only attendant of the Velvet Room that had left, but then again none of them had ever seemed as... _nervous_ about Igor as the twins do. Because of that attitude, it's a little surprising to hear them so surprised by the idea of leaving.

"I don't think so," Justine says. "Our role is to serve our master in the Velvet Room. I don't know what could be _outside_ the Velvet Room that would be important enough to make it worth thinking about leaving."

"I guess she thought there was something," Akira says. Again, he teeters on the edge of asking them for more details about how _they_ feel about Igor and the Velvet Room, and again decides not to risk pushing them away. "But no one ever told me what it was that Elizabeth thought was so important," he says instead. "I think I probably could have gotten the full story out of Lavenza, but... she'd left town by then."

"That name sounds _really_ familiar," Caroline says, eyes screwed up in intense concentration. "Lavenza... I'm almost sure I've heard it..." She pauses, her expression intense with the effort of remembering for a second before she makes a noise of frustration and opens her eyes again. "I'm sure I heard it _somewhere_."

"He asked about her the first time he came to the Velvet Room," Justine reminds her sister.

"Oh yeah," Caroline says. "That must have been it."

Akira frowns. He still thinks sometimes about how callously Igor had told him that something had happened to Lavenza. "She was supposed to be here," he tells the twins, speaking carefully because it's kind of hard to say _I wish someone else was here instead of you guys_ without sounding like a complete jerk. And it's not their fault that they're here and she's not. "I mean... she used to tell me that when I was able to go to the Velvet Room, she'd be there too, to help me. But then she was... hurt." He doesn't know exactly what had happened, but he remembers his dream from when he was arrested, and knows that she had been (still is?) in pain. "And so I guess that's where you two came in."

"What was she like?" Justine asks.

Akira grins. "She knew more about the metaverse and Shadows and Persona than almost anyone I've ever met," he says. "And she wouldn't tell me almost any of it, at first. When we first met, all she wanted to do was keep me away from things that I wasn't supposed to know about yet, and told me to stay home. And obviously I didn't do that, which I think probably drove her crazy at the beginning. But then after a while, she..." He laughs. "I don't know, I think she got used to me? Or I wore her down, maybe. But eventually, she decided to be my friend. Which I'm really glad about, obviously, because..." he gives a self conscious little shrug. "Because she was a good friend. _Is_ a good friend--" He realizes that he's been using past tense this whole time that he's been talking about Lavenza, like she's gone, like she's never coming back. 

"She _is_ a good friend," he says again, more slowly this time. "And I'm going to be a good friend to her, too. I'm going to find her, and bring her back. I think you guys would like her."

And it's true, he realizes. They don't seem all that similar to Lavenza at first glance, but as he gets to know them better he sees glimpses of things in them that remind him of her. Justine has the same calm patience that Akira remembers Lavenza showing, in all but the most extreme circumstances. Caroline, behind her bluster and her tendency to shout at him when she gets excited, has some iron in her that reminds Akira of the way Lavenza never, ever backs down. And since they're attendants of the Velvet Room, that makes them Lavenza's sisters, right? As far as he understands, that's how it works inside the Velvet Room. They're a strange family, but still a _family_ , and that matters.

...and they'd be Margaret's and Elizabeth's sisters too, wouldn't they? Three people that they don't even seem to have ever heard of before, and Akira feels unexpectedly _bad_ for the twins. They still seem so young--they seem like they're missing so much. It doesn't seem fair that they have to be missing their family, too.

There's something wrong here, Akira thinks. And it's something that goes past Lavenza being missing, because there's something off between the twins and Igor and even Akira himself. Akira doesn't know enough about the Velvet Room to know exactly how things are supposed to work, but he knows _enough_ to realize that he shouldn't be sitting here with the twins as the three of them all try to fumble their way through understanding what is even going _on_. And where are any of them supposed to go for answers? Lavenza is hurt somewhere, he's never seen Margaret outside the Velvet Room (where she very obviously is _not_ right now), and Elizabeth--

Elizabeth.

"What are you thinking about?" Justine asks, and her tone is a little bit wary and a little bit curious, like she's trying to figure him out. Akira realizes that he must look as surprised as he's suddenly feeling.

This isn't going to _work_ , is it?

"I think I might know a way to get in contact with Elizabeth," he says. "It might not work, and it would take a lot of coordination to set up, but... I think it _might_ work." He leans forward a little, excited--he and Yu have talked about whether they can get in contact with Margaret and even Marie (and Yu _had_ texted him a while ago that he'd managed that, but that Marie doesn't know anything about what's going on now). But neither of them has thought of trying to get in contact with Elizabeth.

"So she left the Velvet Room a while ago," he tells the twins. "Like I was saying. But she's still--you know, she's _around_. The last time she showed up, it was because she could tell that a whole bunch of Persona-users had gathered together, and she wanted to see what was going on. And I mean, last time that was because someone was trying to end the world, which obviously we wouldn't want to do even if we knew how. But I don't think she necessarily knew about that part when she showed up, I think she just knew there were a bunch of people with Persona--" He pauses for a second, and grins. "And I know a whole lot of people with Persona."

Yeah, it's going to take some effort to figure out how to get enough people in one place to spark Elizabeth's interest, and it might not even work--it's been four years since Akira's seen her, and she might have found whatever she's looking for by this point. She might not be as interested in showing up at a big gathering of Persona-users. But it's worth trying, at least. And getting everyone together could... probably do some good, right? There's probably information they can exchange at least, things like that.

( _And Elizabeth might know how to help get to Lavenza)_

"Good," Caroline says, after a pause in which both twins seem to be processing this. "Then this is going to be part of your rehabilitation, inmate."

"Deal," Akira says, because he's pretty sure that this is Caroline's way of saying that she really wants to see what will happen if his half baked plan works out.

And also because he's going to do it anyway, now that he's thought of it.

"I'll let you know when things look like they're starting to work out," he says. "I mean, there's kind of a lot going on right now, because of the museum and... you know, _everything_." He waves a hand. "It might not happen for a little while, but it's important too, so it _is_ definitely going to happen." 

They've been here for a while by this point, and they're starting to get looks from the girl at the front, like they've overstayed their welcome and she needs the table for someone else. Probably time to get going. 

The twins are unusually quiet as Akira prods them out of the booth and then back out to the street. During the short walk back to the Velvet Room, neither of them says so much as a word. He's thinking pretty hard himself, so he doesn't push it as Justine reenters the Velvet Room, and Caroline makes herself comfortable outside of it.

He says goodbye and is about to leave, when Caroline calls him back.

"Inmate!" she calls, and then adds, in a voice that is quieter and a little bit more hesitant, "...Akira?"

"Yeah?" he says.

"I think..." She looks a little embarrassed. "Your friend. Lavenza?" She waits for Akira to nod. "You said that you're going to get her back from wherever she's trapped, or hurt or whatever."

"I meant it," Akira says. He's not sure exactly where Caroline's going with this, or what she's hoping he'll say, so he decides to just go with the truth and hope for the best. "I _am_ going to find her and I _am_ going to do whatever it takes to get her back safe."

Caroline doesn't quite meet his eyes as she says, "I think she knows that. And... that she trusts you'll be there for her when she needs you."

There's something about her as she says this that makes Akira pause, and really think through his answer before he says anything. There's something about... her expression, her posture, even the fact that she'd used his name instead of calling him _Inmate_ that makes her seem like she's almost someone else.

(Not just anyoneelse, though. Right at this moment, she seems _so much_ like Lavenza)

"How do you know that?" he asks at last.

"I don't know," Caroline says. "Maybe it's the way you talk about her. Maybe--" she scowls, and shakes her head sharply. "I don't _know_ , okay? Don't ask me so many questions!"

"Okay, okay," Akira says, backing off. But the troubled expression on her face makes him add, "Take care of yourself, Caroline."

She gives him a stiff nod, then leans back against the Velvet Room door, arms crossed, eyes downcast. She doesn't move from that position as Akira turns around the corner, and heads for home.

-//-

Caroline watches Akira out of the corner of her eye until he's out of sight. Then she lets herself slump back against the door, the tension in her body easing into something vulnerable, something she'd never have let herself show if there was anyone around that could see her. Since Akira is gone, and Justine is within the Velvet Room, and she is alone, Caroline hugs herself as she shakes. She tries to understand the feeling of hope like sunlight that rises in her chest when Akira talks about his friend.

She doesn't know why she should feel like that. She doesn't know why she'd said what she said to him before he left, except that she'd _needed_ him to know that she's waiting for him--

Except that she doesn't know what that means, either.

Time passes. The sounds of Tokyo--constant and comforting, in its own way--soften and slow as afternoon eases into evening. Eventually, Caroline is pulled out of her own thought by Justine stepping out of the Velvet Room. Caroline feels her presence next to her even before she turns her head and actually sees her sister.

"What are you doing out here?" she asks, straightening quickly.

"It's hard to think inside the Velvet Room, sometimes," Justine says quietly. "I wanted some air."

"What were you trying to think about?" Caroline asks.

"About what happened to everyone else that should have been in the Velvet Room," Justine says. "I want to meet them. I wonder if it would help me to understand..." She shrugs uncomfortably, then says, "Everything?"

"Yeah," Caroline says. " _Everything_ sounds about right."

"Do you think he'll really be able to help?" Justine asks.

Caroline doesn't have to ask who _he_ is. "Yes," she says. Because she hasn't known Akira very long, but it is so unexpectedly easy to trust him. 

"So do I," Justine says. 

They stand together in silence for a while. 

"Justine?" Caroline says at last.

"Yes?"

"Do you ever think about how we're supposed to be the inmate's wardens, but he's the one that gets to walk away from here?"

"I have," Justine says quietly. She turns to look at the Velvet Room door and says, with an obvious about of dread, "I should be getting back, before our master wonders where I am."

They share a look of understanding, as the sense of dread between them builds. But their duty is to serve their master, no matter what their personal feelings about him are. They are not really supposed to both be out here at all--they _definitely_ were not supposed to leave the Velvet Room like they had this afternoon, to be with their prisoner. They... have a role to play, and a duty to serve their master, and... and that's important.

(Even though something about him is wrong, something about the Velvet Room is wrong, something about _them_ is wrong--)

Justine reenters the Velvet Room, and Caroline returns to watching the city alone.

-//-

_May 21_

_After School_

-//-

> **Phantom Thieves**
> 
> **Futaba:** Can we meet somewhere that's not Shibuya today?
> 
> **Ryuji:** What's wrong with Shibuya?
> 
> **Futaba:** If it's going to take a while to figure out how we're going to get past that door, I don't want to be hanging out in a train station the whole time
> 
> **Ann:** We'll probably stick out less if we're not just loitering on an accessway
> 
> **Yusuke:** Where can we all meet though?
> 
> **Yusuke:** Nowhere that we need to pay to spend time in, please :(
> 
> Futaba, do you think Sojiro would be pissed if we all came to Leblanc?
> 
> **Ryuji:** That's the place you two live, right?
> 
> No, Futaba gets to live in the house
> 
> **Futaba:** Don't feel bad, it's just because Sojiro likes me better 
> 
> True
> 
> But basically yeah, it's where we live. We could probably hang out in the attic and scheme
> 
> **Futaba:** I'll tell Sojiro everyone's coming over!

It's either going to work really well, Akira decides, or absolutely crash and burn immediately. Because on the one hand, the idea of having somewhere relatively private for the Phantom Thieves to meet sounds _definitely_ good, compared to what they've been doing so far. On the other hand, after the whole Nanako running away incident, he kind of wouldn't blame Sojiro for not wanting Akira to bring anyone home ever again.

But there's no follow up text from Futaba saying that Sojiro's not okay with everyone coming over, which is how the Phantom Thieves end up sitting around in a circle in Akira's attic bedroom over Leblanc. Sojiro had given the group as a whole a skeptical look when they head upstairs (which... is fair, Akira allows, because it's hard to think of a good reason for a group like theirs to all end up friends) but lets them pass without comment.

"This is a pretty good meeting place," Ryuji says when they've gotten past the uncomfortable looking-around-a-friend's-room-for-the-first-time moment, and everyone has found something to sit on. 

"As long as we don't get too loud while we're talking," Akira says, glancing toward the stairs. "Because first of all I think Sojiro would kick us all out, and second I really don't want to have to make up an excuse for what we're talking about up here if he hears something that we don't want him to."

He... doesn't even know where he'd start, if he's being honest. He's gotten so used to Dojima knowing at least the broad strokes of Persona and Shadows that he doesn't even know what kind of cover story he'd have to come up with to appease Sojiro.

(That's a problem for later, though. Or, hopefully, _never_ )

"So we need to figure out how we're going to get past that door in the Palace," Ann says thoughtfully. "And that means getting the door in the real world open, right?"

"Can't you just open it, Yusuke?" Ryuji asks.

"I don't know if I would be able to," Yusuke says. "Things are... very tense between myself and Sensei right now. Even with how busy he's been because of the exhibit, he's been keeping an eye on me whenever I'm there."

"Besides," Akira says. "If he's already figured out that Yusuke was the one behind the heist, he's going to automatically assume that Yusuke is _also_ behind anything else weird that happens. So we need to come up with a way to do this that throws suspicion off Yusuke completely."

"Also I can't pick locks," Yusuke adds. "And that door is _always_ locked."

"We could break it down," Ryuji says.

"Could we, though?" Ann asks skeptically. 

"It looks easy when they do it on TV," Ryuji says. "I bet we could do it. And there's no way Madarame'd think Yusuke would be strong enough to break down a door. No offense, Yusuke."

Yusuke shrugs one skinny shoulder, clearly not offended at all.

"I don't think it's as easy to break down a door in real life as it looks on TV," Futaba says doubtfully. "Anyway, Akira and Morgana both know how to pick locks, so maybe destroying the door _shouldn't_ be our first plan."

"That really feels like the kind of skill that the rest of us should pick up at some point," Yusuke says thoughtfully. 

"Hang on," Akira says. "This is easy, right? If we don't want to break the door down, which... is probably a good call, then we need to pick the lock to open it. That means either me or Morgana has to do it, and I can't go into the Palace anyway. I can get the door open the next time you guys all go into the metaverse." And actually be _helpful_ , for once.

It's the perfect plan as far as Akira is concerned, but it's met with immediate and loud objections from everyone else in the room.

"Shh!" Akira says, waving a hand urgently in a _keep it down_ gesture. "Sojiro, remember?"

"You can't do it," Yusuke says, lowering his voice again. "You're on probation and Sensei hates you."

"It's still all the same arguments as why you couldn't help with the first heist," Futaba points out.

"And I still hate all those arguments," Akira says.

"Which doesn't mean that they stopped being important," Futaba says, raising a finger. "So someone else is going to have to do it."

"Morgana can," Ann says. "It'd be easy to get him in there, t--"

"No." Akira stands up. "Guys, I appreciate that you're all trying to keep me from getting in more trouble with my probation, but it makes way more sense for me to do this than anyone else, and we all know it. I'm going to be in a lot of trouble if Madarame sees me, but that's _only_ if he sees me. And this is kind of exactly the kind of thing I'm good at. I'm not sitting this out. I'm just not."

"It... would probably go a lot smoother if he can get the door open while we're already in the Palace," Morgana says, after a long pause, during which the only sound is the vague buzz of conversation from downstairs. 

"Yeah," Futaba says reluctantly. "But..."

"You're sure you won't get caught, Akira?" Yusuke asks.

As far as he knows, there's no way to ever be _completely_ sure. But honestly, how hard can it be to open one door? He's been sneaking in and out of that atelier since he was twelve, on the rare occasions he ended up in Tokyo to see his friend. Even if that hadn't been all that often, it's still often enough to have a general idea of the place's layout, of where the door is and how to get to it. "Yeah. You know I can do this, Yusuke."

"Then I think this is the best plan," Yusuke says to the others. "If Akira says he can do it, I believe him."

(Akira's not sure that anyone else sees the same hint of worry behind Yusuke's confident words that he does)

(Probably a good thing)

"Okay," Ryuji says. "Then... let's figure out how to get Akira in and out without being seen."

"And we need to make sure the timing all works out," Morgana reminds him.

" _And_ do it in a way that makes Madarame suspect someone other than Yusuke," Akira adds.

"Right," Futaba says, with just a hint of sarcasm. "So it'll be a pretty simple plan, it sounds like?"

But in the end, the plan that they come up with actually _is_ relatively simple. Akira insists that a clean plan is going to give him more space to improvise if anything goes wrong. Something probably will, he points out, and so the more room he has to change the plan on the fly, the less risk there is of the whole thing falling apart.

It needs to look like someone's broken in from the outside--that's the first thing they decide. Anything else would make it too likely that Madarame would assume Yusuke's behind getting the door open, which obviously they don't want. But that's pretty easy, honestly. A couple broken windows, some footprints--easy, as long as nobody sees him. 

(And he'll make sure that nobody sees him)

Yusuke, even though he and Madarame aren't on speaking terms at the moment, has lived with him long enough to know how his general schedule during exhibits. "He's always there in the morning when it opens, and then at the end of the day when everything closes," he explains to the group. "But he doesn't usually stay there all day, every day."

"So early in the morning would be the best time to get in," Akira says, ignoring Ryuji's groan. "I can get the door open while he's at the exhibit, then get out before he can make it back and see the door's opened. And it'll give all of you a pretty good idea of when you need to be in the Palace and waiting, so you don't have to just hang out there all day."

"So the plan is just to get in, pick the lock on the door, stage a breakdown, and book it?" Ryuji summarizes. "While we wait in the Palace?"

"Pretty much," Akira says. 

"And we think that's going to work?" Ann asks.

"Only one way to find out," Akira says, and feels the familiar thrill of _trouble_ for the first time in a while.

He really hasn't enjoyed sitting things out.

-//-

_May 22_

_Morning_

-//-

Akira is up early on Sunday, leaving Leblanc and making the short walk to the Sakura residence before Sojiro even shows up to start opening the cafe. He and Futaba take the train together to Shibuya, and then go their separate ways--Futaba heads to the accessway to meet the rest of the Phantom Thieves, and Akira makes the short walk to the Atelier, alone.

> **Yusuke**
> 
> He's definitely gone for the morning, right?
> 
> He left the house before I did, and he shouldn't be back for at least another hour
> 
> And I made sure the door was unlocked, you're good to go

As promised, the front door is unlocked. Akira makes a point of heading inside as casually as he possibly can. Tokyo is a big, busy place, and he's learning that most people don't pay attention to _anything_ that doesn't directly involve them. But they're a lot more likely to look up and take notice of him if it seems like he's skulking, or loitering around the building, or generally doing anything that could be seen as shady. On the other hand, when Akira walks right in through the door that Yusuke had left unlocked, none of the people passing by on the street outside even spare a look in his direction.

He pauses inside, considers whether to fake the break in right away, but decides to do it on the way out instead. If he does it now, there's too much risk of someone spotting a broken window and calling the police while he's still working on the door.

Inside, he takes a quick look around just to make absolutely sure that there's no one else in the building (there isn't), and then heads down to where he remembers the peacock painted door. It's still there, as garish as he remembers it being during the few, scattered visits he'd made to the atelier when he was younger. And it's still locked, but that's fine because Akira has his lockpicks.

He kneels in front of the door and starts to work, keeping one ear open for any sounds of Madarame coming home even as most of his attention focuses in on the lock. It's a little bit harder in the real world than in the metaverse, but the basic principles are the same. After a little bit of tinkering (and two broken lockpicks that Akira isn't planning to mention to anyone), the lock clicks open.

Akira's breath catches in his throat, and he grins like an idiot. He's felt so _useless_ sitting around in the real world, twiddling his thumbs while his friends make their way through the Palace. This is something he can do to help, finally, and it's just such an unbelievable relief to be useful again. 

And he's kind of getting a kick out of it, too.

He pushes the door open and stands, his mind already racing ahead to the next several steps of the plan. He needs to leave the door open, make it obvious that someone's been there, and then find a window or door that doesn't face out to the street, fake his forced entry, and then get out of here.

But first, he kind of wants to know what's so important inside this room, for Madarame to keep it locked up, and for him to have a perfect copy of it in his Palace. 

Akira walks quietly through the open door, taking in the stacked up canvases stored on shelves against every wall. From the way they're stored, it's impossible to see what's on any of them, so of course Akira picks a canvas at random and pulls it out to get a better look at what's on it.

And what's on it is the _Sayuri._

"Shit," Akira breathes, as he takes it in. He knows the story of this painting, of course. Yusuke can (and _has,_ in the past) talked about it in excited, enthusiastic detail. Akira has heard plenty about Madarame's famous picture, and about how it had been stolen years ago. He's heard even _more_ about Yusuke's (many) opinions on what exactly it is about this painting that makes it so special--in Akira's opinion, it's this painting that's kept Yusuke here for all these years. He's suspected for years that Madarame is a plagiarist that thrives by stealing his students' work, but after all he'd also painted the _Sayuri,_ and it takes something really special, according to Yusuke, to make something like that. 

But even though Madarame had been the one to paint it years and years ago, it shouldn't be here now. It had been stolen, right? A long time ago, according to Yusuke. 

Akira slides the _Sayuri_ (carefully) back into its spot, and pulls out a second painting from the stacked up canvases to see what _else_ could be in the room. He doesn't know what he's expecting, exactly, but what he sees on the second canvas somehow manages to surprise him even more than what he'd seen on the first one.

It's... the _Sayuri_.

Another _Sayuri._

He pulls out a third, and then a fourth, and a fifth. Every single one is the same, and Akira is starting to get a definitely bad feeling about this. He stands back for a second, thinking hard, trying to figure out what to do next. If he was smart, he'd probably just get out now (the door is open, he's done what he'd come here to do). But this is worth a little more poking around, and trying to figure out what's going on here. For Yusuke, who _loves_ this painting, if for no other reason.

He takes the canvases he's already pulled out, and lays them out on the floor next to each other. Five identical canvasses. Five copies of the _Sayuri_. Are any of them original, he wonders? Or do any of the _other_ canvasses here have the original? It was supposed to be stolen, but... but there's just something so unbelievably sketchy about all these copies sitting here in a locked room, behind a door that is never opened. 

Akira pulls out his phone and starts taking pictures. First of the five paintings on the floor, and then of the stacks on the shelves against the walls. This is absolutely not his area of expertise, and he has a feeling that Yusuke is going to have a better idea of what to make of all this than he does. 

Is it worth bringing one of these back with him, he wonders? There are so many here that it doesn't seem likely Madarame would even notice one missing, and it might help Yusuke figure out what's going on here, if he had an actual copy to see for himself. On the other hand, no matter how unlikely it is that Madarame would notice one copy missing, it's still _possible_. 

He decides to put that question aside for right now.

There's only one canvas that's any different than the rest, and after Akira has finished taking his pictures, he hops carefully over the laid out canvases now covering most of the floor, and goes to the one in the back corner to look at it. Unlike the others, which had been stacked up on shelves, this one is on an easel and covered by a cloth. Akira pulls the cloth back, and is not really surprised at this point to find another copy of the _Sayuri_.

What is going _on_ here? What kind of artist sits around making copies of his own stolen painting?

He's still standing there, trying to puzzle out what Madarame is doing in this room, when he hears someone coming in.

Something like electricity crackles up his spine, and a burst of adrenaline shoots through him. It's Madarame coming back, and Akira should have been gone already. Now he's in this room, with no way out except the door he'd come in through, and there's way too much risk of Madarame seeing him if he goes that way. 

Akira mumbles a string of curses under his breath, mind racing as he tries to think of a way out. There's no way out through the real world that doesn't risk him running into Madarame, which means the only safe(-ish) way out of this is through the metaverse. Yusuke has crossed from here into Madarame's Palace more than once, so at least it works, and that's a good start. Coming _back_ could be an issue, since the app always seems to drop people back into the real world in the same place as they'd gone in, but at least it gets him away from Madarame right this second.

He does do one thing, as quickly and as quietly as he can, before Madarame inevitably notices the open door and comes to investigate. He doesn't know how much time he has before Madarame comes in this direction, but since he hadn't gotten a chance to fake the break-in to throw suspicion off Yusuke, he has to do something else to make sure his friend doesn't instantly become the prime suspect.

Akira is very aware of how much Yusuke loves the _Sayuri_ , and he's sure that even though Madarame is a self-centered, lying, con of an artist, he'd have picked up on that too. The one thing that Yusuke would never do, under absolutely any circumstances, is ruin even a copy of the painting. So, after a quick glance at the five laid out on the floor and (praying that they _are_ all copies. that he hasn't gotten unlucky enough to somehow pull out the real one), he grabs a marker resting on one of the shelves and writes _WE KNOW_ across the bottom of the one in the center.

( _He_ has no idea what's going on, but he's hoping it'll be ominous and vague enough for Madarame to fill in the details himself)

(There's obviously something fishy going on here, Akira just doesn't know what it is)

Then he pulls out his phone and, as he hears Madarame's surprised exclamation from down the hall--he's apparently noticed the open door--swipes quickly over to the metanav, moving as quickly as he can and hoping it'll be fast enough to get out of here before he's seen. He has the app open, the list of bookmarked destinations pulled up and ready under his thumb, and then...

And then, just for a second, he hesitates, remembering his earlier thought that maybe he should try and grab one of these paintings for Yusuke to see. It's not really necessary, technically, for them to get through Madarame's Palace and steal his Treasure, but still _definitely_ something that's going to bother Akira if they don't get it figured out. So he makes a grab for the painting sitting on the easel, since that's the closest one and the easiest to get hold of, then jabs urgently at the _begin navigation_ button on his phone. 

He vanishes from the real world half a second before Madarame appears in the room's doorway.

-//-

(And what, exactly, does the artist see when he reaches the room?)

(He sees an open door that should never have been unlocked, his carefully made copies of the _Sayuri_ scattered on the ground. He sees the phrase _WE KNOW_ scrawled across the place where he had once carefully doctored the painting to cover up the infant that could have been used to identify its real painter. He sees the original missing from it's usual place)

(And he is deeply, _deeply_ shaken)

-//-

_May 22_

_Morning_

-//-

Everything works exactly the way that it's supposed to, inside Madarame's Palace. They get there _early_ , to make sure that they'll have the time they need to fight back through to the place where the door is before Akira gets it open in the real world, and then loiter in the area for a while. It's almost a little anticlimactic, to be standing there waiting and making small talk, while somewhere in the real world Akira is breaking and entering and _hopefully_ not getting caught.

(Yusuke doesn't like the waiting, much--he thinks he understands a little bit better now how it must be for Akira while he's stuck outside the Palace, waiting for the rest of them to get to the Treasure)

And then, eventually, the door opens. 

They don't go very far, just enough to reach the next safe room. They stand around there for a while, as Futaba does a thorough, lengthy scan to make sure they'll be able to get back the next time they're here. Ann had pointed out, while they were all sitting around and waiting, that if they needed the door in the real world opened to get past the door in the Palace _once_ , that they might need it open _every single time_ , an idea that no one had liked very much. Morgana had been pretty sure that they'll be fine as long as Madarame sees at least once that the door can be opened, but--still. They're all worried, and now they're huddled around the safe room table, waiting anxiously for Futaba to finish her scan and tell them how much of a pain the rest of the Palace is going to be.

"I think... we should be okay," she says at last. 

"You _think_ we'll be okay?" Ryuji asks.

"Yeah, I think so," Futaba repeats. "I... don't really know how to explain it in words, but when the door opened, it fundamentally changed something about the Palace. It doesn't look like it's going to close off again."

"So that's good news," Ann says, with a bright, relieved smile. "Right?"

"Yes," Futaba says, but her voice is slow and thoughtful as she says it.

"There's a 'but' coming," Morgana says. "Isn't there?"

"It's not about the door," Futaba says. "It's just that I think Joker's here?" It's hard to see her expression behind her goggles, but Yusuke's still pretty sure he can see the confusion on her face. 

"Are you sure?" he asks.

"He's back by the entrance," Futaba says. "Which is pretty far from here, so it's hard to get a good read? But it's either him or Yu. They both feel..." She shrugs. "I don't know. You can just tell that they're different. Because of all the Persona, I think." 

"Why would either of them be here, though?" Ann asks. 

"We should go back and find out," Yusuke says. "In case... anything went wrong." He knows that as much as Akira _wants_ to be here in the Palace with the rest of them, he's not going to actually come in and risk being seen by the Shadows (and driving the security level up) unless something has gone wrong. And since it's Akira, it's really not hard to jump to the conclusion that he's gotten himself into some kind of trouble.

They head back. 

Sure enough, it's Akira sitting on the ground by the museum entrance when they get there, _well_ out of the way of where any Shadows would be able to see him, with a canvas propped up against a wall next to him. 

"Akira!" Yusuke calls, as soon as they're close enough for Akira to hear them without getting the attention of the Shadows. "What are you doing in here?"

"Did you steal a painting?" Morgana asks.

"Maybe I was feeling left out since I had to miss the first heist," Akira says.

"You _would_ ," Futaba says, in a tone of note perfect exasperation mixed with amusement.

"Sorry, no--" Akira looks like he's biting back a smile. "Bad joke. I didn't plan on stealing anything, but..." he glances sideways, meeting Yusuke's eyes, and the smile suddenly drops. "Things didn't turn out exactly how I thought they would, when I saw what was behind the door."

"What did you see?" Yusuke asks.

There's a pause. Akira gestures to the propped up canvas. "That," he says. "Only--a lot of them. You should take a look, Yusuke."

So he does, heading over to the canvas and turning it over to see the front.

"It's... the _Sayuri_ ," he says, and for a second the shock of it sends every other thought out of his mind, leaves him staring with his mouth open, unable to say a word. Eventually, he tears his gaze away and looks back at his friend. With more urgency now, he says, "Akira, this is the _Sayuri_."

"I know," he says. "You've shown me what it looks like plenty of times, I recognized them right away."

" _Them_?" Morgana echoes. 

"Yeah," Akira says. "The whole room was full of paintings, and I didn't have a chance to look at all of them but the ones I _did_ see were all the _Sayuri_. I guess he's making copies, for some reason? I grabbed one because I figured Yusuke might be able to figure out more about why there's all these copies--"

"No," Yusuke says. "Akira, listen, this is the _Sayuri._ The one that was stolen." He hesitates, then adds, "Or... not stolen, I guess? If Sensei's had it all along..."

 _(He's had it all along_ , and there's a sudden feeling of deep betrayal spreading through Yusuke that he doesn't know how to process)

"Wait," Akira says. "That one's real? How can you tell?"

"Because I know this painting," Yusuke says, with absolute certainty. "I'm not an expert in forgeries, or anything like that... but I can tell with this one. It's the real thing."

"Hang on," Ryuji says. "I feel like I'm missing something here. What's the big deal about this painting?"

"It's called the _Sayuri,_ " Yusuke says, without taking his eyes off the canvas. "It's Sensei's greatest masterpiece. He painted it early in his career, and it ended up opening a lot of doors for him. Everything that came after that was..." he hesitates, not wanting to go over the plagiarism and stolen work again, right at this second. "We all know how distorted he ended up getting," he says instead, because just the fact that they're inside Madarame's Palace is enough to prove _that_. "But the _Sayuri_ is maybe the one good thing he ever made himself. It was stolen years and years ago. Or at least..." he shakes his head, slowly. "It... he _said_ it was stolen."

"But it's just been in that room," Akira says. "All the time."

"He must have faked the theft," Yusuke says. He casts his mind back to his early childhood, trying to remember if the door had been there before the _Sayuri_ 's theft. He doesn't think it had been.

"Why?" Akira asks.

Yusuke stares at the painting. "Because he fakes everything else in his life," he says. "He steals paintings from other people, and fakes the idea that they're _his_ work. He fakes his reputation, he fakes _everything_. Why not this, too?"

"Yusuke," Akira says quietly, putting a hand on his shoulder. 

"I'm okay," Yusuke lies. "I just--you said there were copies, too?"

Akira hesitates, but (to Yusuke's relief) doesn't push. He's feeling a lot of things right now, but none of them are things he wants to talk about with everyone. So when Akira pulls out his phone and starts showing him the pictures he'd taken of what are very obviously fakes (Yusuke can tell immediately), he puts his attention there.

"This doesn't make any sense," he says, taking the phone from Akira's hands and zooming in. "I mean, they're good copies, but--why bother?"

"Why do people usually copy paintings?" Akira asks.

"To pass them off as the real thing," Yusuke says, after a pause.

"Was he selling them, then?" Ann asks.

Yusuke has a brief, internal battle with himself. On the one hand, he doesn't want to believe that the man who had raised him is using the _Sayuri_ (the _Sayuri!_ Of all the paintings in the world that he could have chosen) for something as stupid and pointless as money. But on the other hand...

It's hard to imagine any other reason he'd be doing all that.

"We should get back to the real world," Morgana says. "Because... I guess we have a stolen painting now? And it's risky to try and get much farther into the Palace as long as Akira's here."

"Sorry," Akira says. "I figured it was better than letting Madarame catch me."

"No," Ann says quickly. "It definitely is--"

"Especially since you found the actual _Sayuri_ ," Morgana says. "If it's as big a deal as Yusuke's saying, there's no way Madarame was going to be okay with finding you in the same room that he uses for making his forgeries."

...probably a good point, Yusuke thinks.

"We'll just have to come back tomorrow to make any more progress," Ann says firmly.

Akira winces, but Yusuke feels kind of relieved. He's not sure he'd be able to focus at all on fighting Shadows today--everything with the _Sayuri_ has scrambled his brain a little, and he feels like he's spinning in circles to try and figure out what his sensei is doing with all those copies are doing in a locked room that he's never been allowed to open.

(He _knows_ that Madarame is a... problematic sensei. He's already had his own work stolen and put out under Madarame's name, and he's watched so many other students leave with _no chance_ at making a living in the art world. He doesn't have a hard time imagining that Madarame would make copies of a painting, and find some nefarious use to put them to)

(...it's just that this is the _Sayuri_ , and Yusuke doesn't want to imagine it being dragged into something as dirty as this)

"I agree with Ann," he says. "Let's... just get out of here for today."

And of course it ends up taking longer to get out than it usually would, because they need to figure out what to do with the _Sayuri_. Ryuji points out that they can just put it back, but Yusuke refuses to let it go back to where Madarame can just keep _abusing_ it, and Akira offers the opinion that it might just end up looking more suspicious anyway. In the end Ann takes it home, where it's apparently going to sit in her closet until they can think of something better. Or at least until after Madarame's change of heart. Yusuke trusts her with it more than he trusts Madarame, so he helps her find something to wrap it with and then thanks her so effusively for keeping it safe that she turns pink.

The other reason that ittakes longer than usual to get out of the Palace, because they have to figure out how to get Akira back to the real world without Madarame seeing him when he passes through the atelier. In the end, Yusuke goes back by himself first, to check to make sure his sensei is distracted (he is shut up in his room, talking to someone in low, urgent tones on the phone--obviously he's seen that the _Sayuri_ is missing, if the panic Yusuke can hear when he presses his ear to the door is anything to judge by). Then he goes back to the Palace, tells Akira the coast is clear, and then _runs_ with him out of the atelier and down the street until they're sure they're out of sight.

"Thanks," Akira says, when both of them have caught their breath after their mad dash. "I... wasn't really thinking about how I'd get back out of the Palace after I went in." He pulls a face. "It's really inconvenient that the app brings you back out of the metaverse in the exact same place you went in."

"It was a lot easier when we were just going in and out of TVs," Yusuke says.

"Sometimes," Akira says. "But there was also a lot of trying to find TVs big enough to get in and out of, so it kind of balances out, I guess?"

"I suppose," Yusuke says. "Is Futaba waiting to go back to Leblanc with you?"

"She went back with Morgana back already," Akira says. "While you were checking to make sure the coast was clear with Madarame. I figured it was probably better for them not to be hanging around in case anything went wrong."

Yusuke hesitates, then asks, "Do you mind if I walk back with you, to the station, then?"

There are some things he kind of wants to talk to Akira about, after today. Akira finding the _Sayuri_ has made Yusuke feel nervous and kind of... unmoored. There are questions bouncing around in his head that he wants to say out loud, to someone that will _understand_ , and he thinks Akira is maybe the only one that would.

"Sure," Akira says, after a pause. "If you want to, then yeah."

"It's not like I particularly want to be at home right now," Yusuke points out.

Akira nods, and the two of them walk together toward the station. Akira keeps quiet, giving Yusuke the chance to... just to figure out how to start.

"What do you think it's going to be like?" Yusuke asks at last. "When Sensei has his change of heart?"

"I guess he'll confess," Akira says. "That's what Kamoshida did, right?"

"Right," Yusuke says uncertainly. "But Futaba didn't."

"Futaba's different," Akira says. "She was distorted, but she wasn't hurting anyone. She didn't have anyone to confess to. Kamoshida did, and Madarame will, too."

"You're probably right," Yusuke says, after some consideration. "He probably will confess. And maybe then we'll know what he was doing with..."

"With the _Sayuri_?"

Yusuke nods. "Akira, I need to know why he would do something like that. That painting is... it's something special. It looks like he's just copying it and... I don't know, selling them off. And I _need_ to know why."

"We'll find out," Akira says. "I know this is important to you, Yusuke."

Yusuke takes a deep breath, then slowly lets it out. He's known Akira for a long time. He knows that there's very few people out there that he'd rather have on his side. "Thank you," he says. "And... thank you for stealing the painting."

"I still can't believe I accidentally stole the actual painting," Akira says. "I just wanted you to see one of the copies, I didn't think I was taking the actual original."

"You're too good of a thief, apparently," Yusuke says, which makes Akira snort out a laugh.

"As long as Madarame doesn't report it missing," he says. "We definitely can't afford that now."

"He _can't_ report it," Yusuke points out. "It was supposedly stolen years ago."

"Oh yeah," Akira says. "So that's something, at least. But Madarame's still going to know, right?" He sighs and makes a face. "Things might get a little bit harder for you at home after today."

"They've been pretty hard already, lately," Yusuke says. "He can't say anything about the _Sayuri_ , and he doesn't have any reason to think it's me, so I don't think things are going to get... too much worse. And anyway, it would only be until we change his heart."

"Yeah," Akira says. "And then he'll confess, and..."

He doesn't finish the thought, and Yusuke can kind of understand why. It's hard to imagine what comes after the confession, but Yusuke's life isn't going to go back to the way it used to be. It can't, and he doesn't actually want it to. He's lived with Madarame for as long as he can remember, but... 

Well, if they fail, he's being kicked out on the street. If they succeed, Madarame might be arrested for stealing so many of his students' works, or at the very least he'll be disgraced and his reputation ruined. Yusuke has tried to imagine what it would be like, to stay at the atelier after that, with a version of Madarame that has had a change of heart, and no longer has his reputation to fall back on.

He doesn't want anything to do with it.

"I've been talking to my school," Yusuke says. "About moving into the dorms sometime during the semester. I can't exactly explain _why_ , but..." He shrugs, a little uncomfortably. "I'm already there on a merit based scholarship." Ostentatiously because Madarame had wanted to show that his student was capable of getting into a prestigious high school on his own talent. More realistically, Yusuke has a suspicion that Madarame hadn't wanted to spend any actual money on his education. 

"Does the scholarship include being able to stay at the dorms?" Akira asks. "If--when it comes to that?"

"Yes," Yusuke says. "I'll be on my own, but yes. I'll at least have somewhere to stay."

There's a second or two of awkward silence, and then Akira says, "I don't want to sound all weird and sappy about it, but you know that you won't actually be on your own, right? You'll have us."

"Of course," Yusuke says, because Akira being on his side has never been a question, really. "But I meant I'd be on my own without a guardian."

Akira grins. "Been there, done that." he says. "Not as bad as it seems."

This startles a laugh out of Yusuke, and makes him feel instantly better. Things with his sensei are a mess, obviously, and life is going to get so much _harder_ when Madarame has his change of heart and everyone learns what he's like. 

But he's _not_ going to be alone. And that makes a difference.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phantom Thieves: Akira we need you to open this door  
> Akira: Guys I accidentally stole a famous painting
> 
> In other news, I've been thinking a lot about what Forearmed would have looked like if Akira hadn't had to go all the way to Tokyo for his probation, and could have stayed in Inaba. I sat down and outlined most of the plot a couple days ago just to see where things would have gone, and the Phantom Thieves in that universe would have been Akira, Yusuke, Futaba (there was a good reason for her to join, I promise), Nanako, Daiki, possibly Ken? (he was a lot more fun to write in Arena than I expected), and Lavenza. And I know NOBODY CARES BUT ME, but that is a team I would honestly like to see lol.


	17. May 23-May 27

_May 23_

_Lunchtime_

-//-

Makoto climbs up to the rooftop during lunch, as has become habit over the past several days, to talk to Haru and Akira about leads they've found in chasing down the Phantom Thieves.

(...and to help them with their gardening)

On this particular day, Akira is alone on the roof when Makoto gets there. He's down on his knees in front of one of the garden plots, apparently fully focused on tending to some recently planted... plants.

(Makoto is not sure which plants they are, exactly. The other two are being extremely patient with her and her complete lack of a green thumb, and she's trying her best, but...)

(She's kind of killed a lot of plants)

"Where's Haru?" Makoto asks, as she puts her lunch aside, out of the way.

"She texted me this morning that she has a cold and wouldn't be at school today," Akira says. 

"Oh." Makoto hesitates, then says, "Well, I... hope she feels better soon."

"Me too," Akira agrees. He sits back on his heels, brushing dirt off his hands, and looks up at her. "Listen, if you want to sit out on the gardening today--"

"No," Makoto says. She doesn't like the idea that she's not pulling her weight, even in something like this. They're helping her, so it's the least she can do to try and help them. "I know I still have a lot to learn, but if you don't mind..."

"Sure," Akira says. "That's fine." He shrugs. "I mean, we all know that you're mostly up here for the Phantom Thief talk, not the gardening."

"Well," Makoto admits. "That's true. But that doesn't mean I'm not willing to help while I'm here. I don't like sitting on my hands while you're both working."

"It's not really work," Akira tells her. "It's more of a hobby." He stands with a grin. "But honestly, there's not that much to do today. I just finished checking over what we planted the other day, and it's all in pretty good shape. So it looks like you're off the hook anyway."

"Well, I won't complain about that," Makoto says, as the two of them move away from the garden plots and over to the desks they've been using to eat at. She has a feeling that if it had been Haru up here instead of her, the two of them probably could have found enough garden work to keep them busy until the end of lunch, but at least if Akira's not gardening today, Makoto doesn't have to feel guilty over not helping out. "In which case, do you mind if we discuss the Phantom Thieves? I actually had a new lead I wanted to bring up."

"Oh yeah?" Akira asks. "Do you have a lead on who the Thieves might be?"

"Yes," Makoto says. She doesn't miss the split second of surprise on Akira's expression at this. "Or one of them, anyway, but I'm hoping that she'll be able to point us to the rest of the Thieves if I confront her. And I... actually wanted your opinion before doing that."

"Why my opinion?" Akira asks.

"Because I think she's in your class," Makoto says. "Ann Takamaki?"

Akira's expression shuts down immediately, and Makoto winces. "Does that seem crazy to you?" she asks.

"A little," Akira says, after a brief pause. "She's actually a friend of mine. She sits in front of me in class, and we've hung out after school a few times. It's hard to imagine her running around hanging up... postcards, or whatever they were, just to threaten Kamoshida."

Makoto nods thoughtfully. This is exactly why she'd wanted to ask his opinion before confronting Takamaki about her potential connection to the Phantom Thieves. "I heard that she was friends with the girl that..." She hesitates. "The girl that jumped off the roof. Shiho Suzui."

Akira winces. "Yeah. They're really close."

"And everyone knows now that Suzui jumped because of the way Kamoshida was treating her," Makoto says. "If his abuse was enough for Suzui to jump off a roof, it doesn't seem too extreme for her friend to try something as relatively harmless as posting warning calling cards on the school walls."

"I guess not," Akira says reluctantly. "When you put it like that."

"And she was actually one of the first people I talked to when I started looking into the Phantom Thieves," Makoto continues. "Although for completely different reasons."

Akira half-grins at this. "She did mention that to me," he says. "She said you heard her talking to my cat and thought it was suspicious."

"That was _your_ cat?" Makoto asks. She remembers that she'd overheard what sounded like a very strange, one sided conversation. When she realized what was going on, she'd then had a brief talk with Takamaki about the cat, and about whether she'd heard anything about the Phantom Thieves. And that had been the end of it, until Makoto started looking into things a little bit more, and just recently realized the connection between Ann Takamak and Shiho Suzui.

"He gets lonely if he stays home all day," Akira says. "So I bring him to school and he sleeps in my desk instead."

"And--" Makoto is momentarily distracted from her explanation of why Ann Takamaki is the most suspicious potential Phantom Thief candidate she's found so far. Akira brings his _cat_ to school? "And no one has a problem with that?"

"I don't think too many people have noticed," Akira says. "But he doesn't get in anyone's way."

There's a part of Makoto that wants to object to Akira letting a cat sleep in his desk as a matter of general principle. This is a school. There are not supposed to be cats here. But--honestly, she has so much on her plate between classes and cram school and finding the Phantom Thieves, that the last thing she wants to do is worry about Akira's illicit cat. 

Besides, Akira has been polite and helpful so far, even after Makoto invaded his and Haru's gardening, and Makoto reluctantly decides to overlook a cat that apparently isn't bothering anyone.

"But the point is that when I confronted Takamaki," Makoto continues, after a pause, "At first I didn't realize she was hiding a cat. I just saw that she was acting suspiciously, and honestly--" She hesitates. "I think there was more to it than _just_ hiding a cat. I think that she was hiding something else."

"And you think that something was the Phantom Thieves?" Akira asks.

"I know it doesn't sound very convincing," Makoto admits. "And if she wasn't also Suzui's friend, I probably wouldn't be too suspicious of her. But I do want to at least have a conversation. I didn't get the impression that she was a very good liar when I spoke to her before. If I ask her directly about the Phantom Thieves, I think I'll learn something."

Akira takes a bite of his lunch, and chews over his answer at the same time as his food. Finally, he says, "I still think it's kind of a longshot. But if you're going to talk to her about whether she's a Phantom Thief, do you mind if I come with you?"

"If you wouldn't mind," Makoto says. It sounds like they're either friends or (at the very least) friendly classmates, and things might go a little more smoothly than if she tries to talk to Takamaki by herself. "I was thinking about talking to her after school today."

"I think she actually has plans after school the next few days," Akira says vaguely. "I'm pretty sure she mentioned it earlier. But I can talk to her and let you know when she'll be around after school?"

"Thank you," Makoto says. "That would be really helpful, Akira."

"No problem," he says. "But--do you mind if I ask you a question?" Makoto nods, and he says, "When you first started coming up here, you said that what the Phantom Thieves did was relatively harmless. There's a lot of rumors going around about how they _actually_ did what they said they would, and stole his heart, and that's why he confessed. It sounds like you don't think they did?"

"I don't even know what that would mean," Makoto says. "Stealing hearts?"

"Fair," Akira says with a grin. "It is a kind of weird thing to say,"

"I'm pretty sure that it was all just a coincidence," Makoto says. "Takamaki, and maybe some of her friends, were upset with Kamoshida because of what happened to Suzui. And then after that, he started to feel guilty that what he did led her to jump off the roof, and he confessed." She knows that she's in the minority about this. Most of the school, including Haru, have spent the last couple weeks inventing more and more outlandish stories of how the Phantom Thieves had _stolen Kamoshida's hart_.

She's never heard Akira's opinion about them though, she suddenly realizes. "What about you?" she asks. "Do you think they could really steal his heart?"

"I think you're going to laugh at me if I say anything other than no, after what you just said," Akira says with a smile. 

"That's not exactly an answer," Makoto says.

"It's not," Akira says, then considers for a few seconds. "I guess I haven't thought about it too much? Kamoshida's a jerk. I'm glad he confessed in front of everyone, I'm glad he resigned, and I'm not honestly too upset that someone stapled a bunch of warning notes to the bulletin board to try and freak him out."

"If they knew what Kamoshida did to Suzui before he confessed it, they could have told a teacher," Makoto says. "They could have done something other than what they did."

"Maybe," Akira says. He glances at his phone, then stands up and starts packing his lunch away. "Anyway, it's about time to head back to class. I can talk to Ann and find out when she's free, then let you know?"

"That sounds good," Makoto says. "Thank you."

They're packed up and heading for the stairs, when Akira asks, "Why do you care so much about finding them if you don't believe they really did anything to Kamoshida? It... sort of seems like what they did wasn't too big of a deal, the way you're looking at it."

Makoto hesitates, but he's been helping her, after all. She's not sure that they're _actually_ friends, but as sad as it might seem, Akira and Haru are the closest thing she has at Shujin. "If it was up to me," she says. "I wouldn't really care about finding them at all. But Principal Kobayakawa asked me to look into it. And he _does_ care about finding the Phantom Thieves. He's basically told me that if I figure out who's behind it, he'll write me a letter of recommendation to whatever colleges I apply to. And if I don't..."

"That's pretty manipulative," Akira says bluntly.

It kind of is, Makoto agrees. But she needs a recommendation--she has her sister working hard at home, alone, putting Makoto through school and providing for her. There are expectations that she has to meet, and this is an important part of it. "It's fine," she assures Akira. "Everything's fine."

Akira shakes his head. "That sounds like the kind of thing people say when everything's gone wrong," he points out. "But I guess..." he shrugs, and doesn't finish the thought.

Makoto says goodbye to him on the second floor, but his comments stick with her for the rest of the afternoon, and no matter how hard she tries, she can't _quite_ shake them away.

-//-

_May 23_

_Afternoon_

-//-

> **Phantom Thief Finders (and Gardening Club)**
> 
> **Haru:** Thank you both so much for looking after the gardening today
> 
> No problem :)
> 
> **Makoto:** Are you feeling any better? Akira says you were home with a cold
> 
> **Haru:** I think I should be feeling well enough to come back tomorrow, thank you
> 
> Nothing to report on the gardening front, by the way. The plants are all in good shape
> 
> **Haru:** And I suppose there's nothing new on the Phantom Thief finding, either?
> 
> **Makoto:** Actually, I think I have an idea of who might have been one of them
> 
> **Haru:** Really? Who is it!
> 
> One of my classmates. We're going to talk to her after school one of the days this week

> **Phantom Thieves**
> 
> Head's up, everyone, Makoto has apparently decided that Ann is a possible Phantom Thief
> 
> **Ann:** Wait
> 
> **Ann:** How am I more suspicious than Ryuji???
> 
> **Ryuji:** Hey!
> 
> She wants to talk to you after school one day this week, Ann
> 
> **Ann:** We were kind of hoping to power through the rest of Madarame's Palace this week :(
> 
> I know. I told her I'd talk to you and find out when you're free after school
> 
> **Futaba:** I think... we can probably get through the Palace in another three or four days? Kind of hard to tell without knowing exactly what Shadows are between us and the Treasure, but
> 
> **Futaba:** I think we should be done by Thursday
> 
> So Thursday finish the Palace, on Friday me and Makoto talk to Ann about her being suspicious
> 
> Maybe while we do that, the rest of you can get the calling card to Madarame?
> 
> And then we get the Treasure and change his heart on Saturday.
> 
> **Ann:** It's a pretty tight schedule
> 
> **Futaba:** Just another week in the lives of the Phantom Thieves!
> 
> **Futaba:** But actually it does seem like a good idea to try and time the calling card for the day Makoto interviews you
> 
> **Ryuji:** Throw suspicion off her, you mean?
> 
> **Futaba:** It can't hurt
> 
> **Ann:** I still kind of hate this
> 
> **Yusuke:** At least you can clear your name with the student council, and then you won't have to worry about it again
> 
> **Ann:** :(
> 
> **Ann:** This is so annoying

> **Phantom Thief Finders (and Gardening Club)**
> 
> **Haru:** This is so exciting!
> 
> **Haru:** You'll have to tell me all about it after you talk to her :)

> **Phantom Thieves**
> 
> **Ryuji:** Sounds kind of hilarious
> 
> **Ryuji:** You HAVE to tell us about it after, Akira

-//-

_May 26_

_After School_

-//-

Yusuke does not enjoy the next few days of Palace infiltration. 

He has braced himself for the Palace to get worse the deeper they go. Kamoshida's had been terrible by the time they got to where his Shadow was, and Yusuke has spent a few sleepless nights wondering what he's going to see in the depths of his sensei's heart.

...

It's not going to be good, is it?

More and more, life at the atelier has started to feel like a long, slow war. It had started after the exhibit heist, gotten worse after the Akira-Sayuri heist, and now every day just feels more and more tense. Madarame is always angry, and Yusuke has started putting as much effort into avoiding his sensei in the real world as he does into avoiding the Shadow version in the metaverse. He sneaks around the atelier, trying to stay quiet and avoid an argument, and after a while it starts to feel like there's no divide at all between the two worlds. It's _exhausting_ , to be on guard all the time, and Yusuke is really looking forward to the day they finally finish with his sensei's Palace.

Well.

He would have been looking forward to it, except for the lingering dread of how much _worse_ things are going to get before they start getting better.

The real turning point comes on Thursday, when they go through what seems like an ordinary door, and into a space that very clearly does not belong in a museum. There are paintings in it, yes, but they're all just more _copies_. The _Sayuri_ , over and over again, as if a gallery of plagiarized work would ever belong in any self respecting museum.

(There's also the issue of how it's too big to fit in the space it should, and how the doors connect to places they couldn't possibly reach, but Yusuke doesn't think that's quite as important)

"Isn't this that painting Madarame's been copying in the real world?" Ryuji asks, as they all cluster around the nearest one.

"Yes," Yusuke says, as everyone turns to him for the answer. "Although..." He tries to shove his uneasiness aside, and focus just on the paintings and why they're here. There's something just a _little_ too suspicious about them all sitting out here for him to believe they're just decoration. "Although this isn't a very good copy," he says. "Compared to the ones that he's been doing in the real world, these are fairly obvious."

"Yeah," Ann says, sounding a little uncertain. "Wasn't the real one... weren't the colors different?"

"They were," Yusuke says. "I don't know why he'd have made worse copies in his own cognition than in real life, but..." He hesitates for a fraction of a second, gaze sweeping over the small collection of fake _Sayuri_ copies in front of them. "That one looks the most like the real one," he says. "The details and technique are completely wrong, of course, but at least it looks like he was making an effort to try and be... accurate...?"

He trails off, watching the unexpected effect that his words are having on the space around them. When he points out the real painting (or the one that _looks_ like the real painting, since all of them are still just fakes), the rest vanish and a door opens up in front of them.

"So I guess we just had to find the real one?" Morgana says.

"None of them are real," Yusuke says. "We had to find the realest _looking_ one."

"Okay," Morgana says. "Realest, got it. We should just move on now that we can."

And so they file through the door, which leads out into an area that longs pretty much exactly the same as where they'd just been. There are more _Sayuri_ copies here, and the differences are more subtle this time. Yusuke still finds the 'real' fake fairly quickly, and again they're able to move on.

The third group of fakes almost trips him up, not because it's any less obvious what's wrong with each painting, but because he doesn't see _any_ that look correct at first. It's not until Futaba spots another painting, hiding around a corner and down a little way, that he's able to confirm that yes, _that's_ the right one.

"It's getting harder to find the real one every time," Morgana notes, as the usual door appears in front of them.

"It's fine, Mona," Ryujii says. "As long as Fox can keep picking out the right one, we can get through it no problem!"

"Sure," Morgana says. "But it still makes me a little worried that his cognition is so focused on hiding this painting." Slightly reluctantly, he adds, " _Especially_ because the painting in the real world is gone now. He might be feeling more paranoid about it than usual now that Akira's stolen it."

"So we might have to keep doing this for a while?" Futaba asks.

"I don't know," Morgana says. "Maybe."

"Only one way to find out," Ryuji says, and goes charging through the door first.

"Well at least there's not that many Shadows around here," Ann points out. "So we have time to figure it out, right?"

Yusuke shrugs--he doesn't _like_ this part of his sensei's Palace, but he still honestly thinks that Morgana is probably worrying over nothing--and follows her through the door. A moment later Futaba and Morgana follow him through, but by that point he's too busy looking around this new area to really notice their arrival.

Because this door has taken them to an area that is _filled_ with _Sayuri_ copies. There have to be forty or fifty, maybe more, spread out on their easels in a scattered pattern all around them. And, even as Yusuke looks around at all of them...

They start to fade. The images pale, fade, and in less than a minute the canvases are completely blank.

"Well _now_ how are we supposed to find the real one?" Ryuji asks.

"I don't know if we can," Yusuke admits. "There's nothing left to look at." He starts to walk slowly among the scattered portraits, trying to see anything at all that could mark out which one they're supposed to pick. But... there's honestly nothing. It's as if there had never been anything painted on the canvases at all.

"Fox?" Futaba says, with just a hint of anxiety in her voice. "Fox, do you see anything?"

"No," Yusuke admits. "I think Mona might have been right. Sensei must be _very_ worried about this painting being stolen." And now his cognition of it has gotten ridiculously overprotective.

" _Thank_ you," Morgana says. He looks down and away from the rest of the group, and adds. "But... I kind of wish I'd been wrong. How are we supposed to get past this?"

"I can try scanning around us for other doors," Futaba says. "But I think it'll probably be like the last few areas. No way out until we find the right painting."

"I might have an idea," Yusuke says, slowly. "I don't like it very much, and I don't know if it would even work. But..." But there's literally no way to choose a painting based on the information they have, is there? There might not even _be_ a correct painting, now that all they're left with is blank canvases, and Yusuke doesn't know what the consequences are for choosing the wrong one, since he hasn't gotten it wrong yet. 

"What's the idea?" Futaba asks.

"I'm going to paint a _Sayuri_ ," Yusuke says, and hates the idea even while he says it. Copying paintings isn't _right_. It's what Madarame does, but it's not _right_. On the other hand, it's the only way forward, and it's not like any of this is even real. Right? It's not like anything he paints here is ever going to exist in the real world.

(It feels wrong anyway)

"This might take a while," Yusuke warns, as he settles himself in front of the closest easel and starts pulling out his art supplies.

"Why do you have those with you?" Futaba asks.

"I always have them with me," Yusuke says. "The essentials, anyway."

" _Essentials_ ," she echoes.

"No one says anything about Joker dragging all his metaverse stuff with him all the time," Yusuke says. "Why is it so much weirder to have paints with me all the time?"

"Metaverse stuff is useful," Futaba tells him.

"And now this is too," Yusuke says.

No one argues this, so he puts brush to canvas, and starts to paint.

At first, it's just--awkward. He knows the painting so well that he could, easily, have reproduced it from memory alone. But there's the fact that he doesn't like the idea of just... copying, which is bad enough by itself, and on top of that there's everyone scattered around watching him, which is just kind of weird.

He tries to focus on the painting.

He tries (hard) to focus on keeping it exactly the same as the real _Sayuri._

No, really. He does try.

...it's just that after a while, he realizes that he's not _exactly_ painting from memory anymore. What's coming out on the canvas is something a lot closer to the painting he'd made of Ann a few weeks ago. He's making an honest effort to faithfully recreate the _Sayuri_ , because he knows that's what they need to be able to move on, but what comes out is something that looks similar but not exactly the same. What comes out, is something that feels more--true.

(And no, he doesn't know exactly what that means. It's just... how he feels)

Common sense says that he should just start over. What they need is a perfect copy of the _Sayuri_ , and what Yusuke is painting is definitively not that. But Yusuke clings to that feeling of making something real, and just keeps going.

He's not actually sure that something that feels so true could be leading him down the wrong path.

-//-

_May 26_

_Afternoon_

-//-

While Yusuke paints, the rest of the Phantom Thieves take the opportunity to rest for a little while. Futaba scans the area with Necronomicon, just to be sure that there aren't any Shadows nearby right now, and then the four of them spread out a little.

Futaba finds herself hanging out close to Yusuke, so that she can keep an eye on what he's painting and see when he's close to being done. And, although this probably isn't going to help him to finish any faster, after a while she starts asking him questions.

(So maybe she's getting a little bored with just waiting)

"Do you really always carry your art supplies with you?" she asks. "To the metaverse?"

"Every time I go anywhere," he tells her, without looking up. "Not just the metaverse. It's easier to always have them with me than to remember whether I need to bring them on any particular day. And one of these days I would really like to paint Mementos, so..." He trails off. Then he says. "Anyway, you have your laptop with you all the time, right?"

And honestly, it's not like his supplies are all that much bulkier than the laptop that Futaba _is_ actually carrying around with her ( _because you never know_ ). So she stops asking him questions about it, and just lets him paint for a while in silence.

She's not really an artsy kind of person. Technology is definitely more of her field than the fine arts are, and she just... hasn't ever really had a reason to care about it before. Now, she's realizing that she sort of does, both because of Phantom Thief heisting, and because Yusuke is basically a friend by this point, and he never seems to do anything else.

(Okay, so he's _definitely_ a friend)

(She's still getting used to being able to say that)

But _the point is_ that even without knowing all that much about art, she can tell that there's something weird to the version of the _Sayuri_ that he's painting now. There's something in it that just feels different, even though Futaba doesn't know exactly what that something is, at first. It's not until she realizes that she can feel Necronomicon buzzing at the back of her mind that she starts to kind of piece it together.

 _Kind_ of. She can tell that there's _something_ metaverse-y about it, but not exactly what it is that she's sensing. It makes her wonder what his painting of Ann would have looked like if she'd gotten a chance to scan it with her Persona. 

"Do you do that on purpose?" she asks.

"Do what?"

"I don't think I know, exactly?" Futaba says. She turns her head slightly to one side and squints, trying to focus on it a little better. "But it's that same kind of thing as the painting with Ann."

"It's... real," Yusuke says quietly. 

Futaba might have asked what he meant by that, except that his voice sounds more like a question than anything else. So she looks back at the painting again, which is shaping up into something very close to the _Sayuri_ , but without being exactly the same. Necronomicon continues to pick up _some_ kind of reading from it, like a vague buzz in the back of her mind that only gets stronger as Yusuke comes closer to finishing. It doesn't feel exactly the same as a Shadow or a Persona, but there's still something there. And since Futaba's super curious about how this is going to turn out, she stays close and watches the painting.

For a while, Yusuke makes quick, certain progress through the painting, going faster than Futaba feels like is probably normal. He'd met with Ann more than once to work on the painting of her, Futaba knows, but either his familiarity with the _Sayuri_ or whatever it is that's metaverse-y about it seems to be helping him finish this one more quickly. And then, just at the end, Yusuke hesitates for the first time since he's started working. It's just a brief pause, only noticeable to Futaba because he's seemed so confident with everything he's done so far. And when he goes back to work, there's suddenly a _very_ definite difference between what he's painting and the original _Sayuri._

Every other copy of the painting has had a blank space at the bottom, along the woman's lower half, kind of hiding it behind a vague, purple smear thing.

(...Futaba is _really_ not an artist, she does not have the words for this)

In this version, Yusuke paints the woman holding a baby. And Futaba--through Necronomicon--can kind of feel what Yusuke had been talking about earlier. It _does_ feel sort of real, in a way that none of the other copies had. Which is weird, because the final product doesn't look particularly similar to the _Sayuri_. It has a little bit of Yusuke's style, she thinks, and then of course there's the baby in his version that shouldn't be there, but--

Well, yeah. There's something about it that's real. She thinks that maybe it's supposed to be there.

"Is that what it's supposed to look like?" Ryuji asks, and Futaba looks up to see that the rest of the Thieves have wandered their way over to the two of them, and are looking down at the finished painting.

"I think so," Yusuke says, holding the painting up. 

"It doesn't look like the other ones did," Morgana says doubtfully. "Is that really going to be okay?"

"I think it'll work," Futaba says. "I'm definitely getting some good readings off it."

"From your Persona?" Ann asks.

"Yep."

"Is it... normal to be able to scan something that Yusuke painted?" Ann asks after a second.

Futaba can only shrug in response. No, actually, she doesn't think that it _is_ normal, but as long as it works, who cares?

"I'm finished," Yusuke says, and even though he'd sounded uncertain when he started the painting, there's some definite pride in his voice now. "I couldn't make something that looked exactly like the _Sayuri._ I'm not that kind of artist. I don't _want_ to make art that's just a copy of what someone else has already done. But this is... the feeling of the _Sayuri._ It's a different kind of true."

And as he says the words, Futaba can feel something opening up around them, a way forward deeper into the Palace. Another door appears in front of them, just like the other ones they've seen so far. The five of them exchange a quick look, and then dash forward through the door, to find--

They're standing in what looks like a security room, looking out a window at what is obviously the Treasure. It looks exactly the same as the one they'd seen in Kamoshida's Palace before they sent the calling card, and Futaba feels a wide smile growing across her face as it sinks in what exactly this means. It means that they're finally _done_. It means that the next time they come back into the Palace, it's going to be _after_ they send the calling card, and the alert level is probably going to be so high anyway that it won't even matter if Akira is there or not.

"Oh thank _God_ ," Ann sighs, when Futaba points this out. "I mean, we got through the Palace alright, but..."

"Yeah!" Ryuji says. "We're getting Joker back!"

(Before they head back, Futaba asks Yusuke if he's going to take the _Sayuri_ copy with them)

(He hesitates, but shakes his head and leaves it where it is. "I know what I made," he tells her. "That's enough for me.")

-//-

_May 27_

_After School_

-//-

Akira spends Friday night holed up in Leblanc's attic with Futaba and Morgana, listening to everything they have to tell him about the Phantom Thieves' most recent trip into Madarame's Palace. He's relieved that he's finally going to be able to get back into the metaverse with everyone else, and excited that they'll (hopefully) be able to change Madarame's heart before the end of the _weekend_. And the sooner Yusuke is out of that house and not being threatened with arrest, the better. 

They talk about how they're going to get the calling card out--Yusuke, apparently, has already started putting it together--and what exactly it should say. They talk about what Madarame's Shadow might be like when they fight him, and they talk about the preparations and supplies they need to get before then. It's exciting, and Akira _actually cannot wait_ to be back in the metaverse with his team in only a couple of days.

So, with all that to think about, it's maybe not a surprise that Akira actually manages to (temporarily) forget about the fact that he and Makoto are supposed to be questioning Ann about the Phantom Thieves after school. He remembers as soon as he walks into the classroom and sees Ann looking nervous and worried at her desk, to be fair. Then he spends most of the rest of the day reassuring her that everything's going to be fine, even though he honestly doesn't have any idea how this is going to go.

Makoto is smart. She pays attention to things, she remembers things, and she _has_ actually figured out who one of the Phantom Thieves is. Ann is a Phantom Thief. Makoto had managed to put the pieces together. Even if Makoto's chain of reasoning isn't exactly the strongest, Akira's worried that it's going to be really hard to convince her that she's wrong.

He and Ann head straight to the student council room after classes end, leaving Morgana with Ryuji. Morgana had offered to come with them, but Akira has a feeling that's going to do more harm than good. Makoto hadn't _completely_ freaked out when he mentioned that he brought a cat to school every day, but it's probably still a good idea to not remind her about Morgana too often.

Makoto's not in the room yet when Akira and Ann get there, so they sit down at the table in the middle of the room, Ann on one side and Akira on the other, and make incredibly awkward small talk.

"This is weird," Ann says, picking at a loose thread on her jacket sleeve and not quite looking at him. "I mean--this is really weird."

"Compared to everything else we've seen so far this year?" Akira asks. " _This_ is weird?"

The comment startles a laugh out of her--which had been the goal--but she doesn't keep smiling long. "I know," she says. "Compared to everything else, I guess that sounds kind of silly. But I just meant--it's weird that we have to act like we're not on the same side."

"Oh," Akira says, as something in his stomach twists. "Yeah. That part... isn't great." Because he doesn't mind keeping secrets, really. And he doesn't mind lying when he has to, to make sure that those secrets really do stay secret. But there's something about pretending he's actively trying to help Makoto and Haru track the Phantom Thieves down that feels almost aggressively dishonest in a way he doesn't like.

He doesn't have a chance to say anything else--which is maybe a good thing, since Ann already looks so unhappy about the whole thing--before the door slides open, and Makoto comes in to join them. "I'm sorry for the wait," she says. 

"No problem," Akira says. "We were just hanging out." His voice is intentionally casual, because he wants this to be a conversation more than it is an interrogation. He's hoping that if he doesn't seem to think this conversation is a big deal, maybe Makoto will take it a little bit less seriously, too.

Makoto sits down next to him, and pulls out a notebook and a pencil case. She clears her throat, sounding a little bit awkward herself. "Thank you for coming," she says to Ann. "I know we talked a little once before, about--well, Akira's cat." She shoots Akira a sideways look that he pretends not to see. "But I had a few more questions I wanted to ask."

"Sure," Ann says. "Yeah, that is--that's fine. Akira says that it has something to do with those calling cards that someone hung up all over the school?"

"The ones from the Phantom Thieves everyone has been talking about lately," Makoto says. "Yes."

"I don't think I can tell you anything too helpful," Ann says. "I only know what everyone else knows."

"Unfortunately," Makoto says. "I don't think that's true. Your friend was the one that jumped off the roof, wasn't she?"

"Shiho's my friend," Ann says. "Yes." Akira can hear a sudden, sharp edge in her voice with those words, and by the way Makoto stiffens slightly, she picks up on that too. _Don't drag Shiho into this_ , Ann's tone says, and Akira looks over at Makoto.

"We don't really have to make this about Shiho, do we?" he asks. " _She_ definitely didn't have anything to do with those cards."

"I..." Makoto hesitates, and seems to realize that she's slightly crossed a line. "No, you're right. I'm sorry for bringing her up. But there's no doubt that she was Kamoshida's most badly hurt victim, and the calling cards were put up a few days after she jumped."

Ann crosses her arms. "So what?" she asks.

"Several people that I've spoken to in the past couple of days say that they saw you running out to her after she jumped," Makoto says, and although there's still a trace of apology in her voice, she doesn't back down from her questions. "A few of them noticed that you were... very upset."

"Because she's my best friend," Ann snaps. " _And she jumped off the roof_."

Makoto opens her mouth, but then hesitates. She looks over at Akira, and he realizes that she's hoping he'll be able to help calm Ann down. He jumps at the chance, because he actually thinks that Ann's going to be more convincing now that she's angry than she would have been earlier, when she was just nervous.

"Ann," he says. "No one's saying that what Kamoshida did to Shiho wasn't terrible, because it _definitely_ was."

"Yes," Makoto agrees quickly.

"And if you wanted to do something to get back at Kamoshida," Akira continues. "That would make sense. Listen--all we want to know is whether you saw her jump, and decided to just... hang up a bunch of cards around the school."

" _No_ ," Ann says firmly, and for a second she meets Akira's gaze. He bits back a smile at the fierce pride he can read in her expression-- _no_ , she hadn't just hung up a bunch of cards. _No,_ she hadn't seen Kamoshida drive Shiho to try and kill herself, and then let him get away with it. _No_ , she hadn't stopped at just sending out calling cards.

They'd fought through his Palace, and beaten his Shadow, and changed his heart.

But all Makoto sees, apparently, is the firmness of Ann's denial. She hears that no, Ann hadn't hung up the Phantom Thief calling cards, and she seems convinced. "Alright," she says. "Thank you for coming here and answering our questions."

"Is that it?" Ann asks.

"Yes," Makoto says. "I'm sorry to have kept you after school."

Ann gives her a jerky nod, then leaves the room without saying anything else. As soon as she's gone, Makoto leans back in her chair and lets out a groan. "I was really hoping that she would turn out to be the one that hung up the cards," she says. 

"You wanted it to be Ann that badly?" Akira asks.

"I just really want all this to be over," Makoto says. "I don't actually _enjoy_ this, you know."

"No," Akira says slowly. "It... really doesn't seem like you do."

"I don't want to let the Principal down," Makoto says. "And I really can't afford to lose the letter of recommendation he's willing to write for me. But..."

Akira's not exactly sure where she's going with this, so he stays quiet as she trails off into silence as well. After a while, she continues.

"I keep thinking about my father," she says. "When I was younger, he used to tell me about his work as a police officer. I keep telling myself now that I'm doing the same kind of thing that he would have done. Investigating. Talking to people. Trying to figure it all out."

"I didn't know your dad's a cop," Akira says.

"Was," Makoto says, softly.

"Oh." There's something about the way she says it tells Akira that he hadn't just left the police, but that he'd died. He hadn't known that Makoto's dad had been with the police, and he hadn't known that he'd died, either.

"The man that raised me after my parents died is a cop, too," he tells her. He's not sure if it's the right thing to say, because maybe she'd had a bad relationship with her dad, and maybe she doesn't want to go further into this topic of conversation. Luckily, though, it seems to catch Makoto's interest.

"Was he?" she asks.

"Yeah," Akira says. "And--do you mind if I say something that I learned from him?"

Makoto nods, in a go ahead kind of way.

"Being a cop isn't about just enforcing all of the rules, all of the time," Akira says. Which is good for him, because he has never tried very hard to keep himself out of trouble, and Dojima knows this. "Sometimes there are things that are worth looking the other way for."

"And you think that those calling cards are one of them?" Makoto asks.

"Well," Akira says. "Kind of, yeah. Look, Makoto--Kamoshida was a dick."

She coughs, and looks like she's trying hard not to smile at the language. 

"He was," Akira says. "He was abusing the volleyball team and raped at least one student, and that makes him a real _dick_ , Makoto. If someone wanted to call him out for that with those cards, then maybe it's not worth turning them into Kobayakawa and possibly getting them kicked out of here. Not even if you're going to get a really good letter of recommendation out of it."

"I don't know if it would be or not," Makoto admits. 

Akira takes a gamble, because he's not sure if her dad had been the decent kind of cop, like Dojima, or the _awful_ kind of cop, like the ones that had arrested him back in March. "Would your dad have thought it was worth it?" he asks.

Makoto is perfectly still for a second, and then she shakes her head and stands up in a single, jerky movement. "I should get going," she says, pushing her things into her bag. 

"Makoto," Akira says quickly, standing too. Maybe he's gone a little too far. "I didn't mean--"

"No," she says. "It's fine."

They leave the room together, a little awkwardly. Makoto is in a hurry to get out of there, but she doesn't seem to want to leave Akira alone in the student council room. Which, fair enough, he's not part of the student council, so he walks out with her.

Just outside, they run into a breathless Haru hurrying up the hall toward them. "Did you hear?" she asks.

"Hear what?" Makoto says.

"Look," Haru says, and holds her phone out so that both of them can see the news article there. Makoto makes an involuntary noise of surprise, and Akira does his best to look like he hadn't known this was coming.

(But the thing is, he'd already _known_ that the calling card was supposed to be going out today, so it's a little hard to make his expression look shocked instead of excited)

"Another calling card was sent this afternoon," Makoto says, after a brief pause as she takes in the headline. "At--where is this?"

"It's an art exhibition in Shibuya," Haru explains. "It's actually where Akira and I met."

"And the Phantom Thieves have left a calling card for this artist?" Makoto asks.

"Yes," Haru says. "His name is Madarame."

"I think I've heard of him," Makoto says.

"He's a fairly well known contemporary artist," Haru says. "Especially recognized for his ability to paint in a variety of different styles. And they've been advertising his exhibition a lot in Shibuya lately."

"What did he get a calling card for?" Makoto asks. She sounds honestly confused, which is at least an improvement over how her earlier angry and hurt reaction to Akira's comments about her dad.

Haru takes her phone back, scrolls down a little, and reads aloud from the article. "Sir Ichiryusai Madarame, a great sinner of vanity whose talent has been exhausted. You are an artist who uses his authority to shamelessly steal the ideas of his pupils. We have decided to make you confess all your crimes with your own mouth. We will take your distorted desires without fail. From--the Phantom Thieves."

There's a brief, dramatic pause as she finishes reading this.

"It's a little wordy," says Akira, who had spent about half an hour last night editing down Morgana's first, three paragraphs long, suggestion. 

"That's all you have to say?" Haru asks, raising her eyebrows at him. "It's a little _wordy_?"

"Well," Akira says. "It _is_."

She smiles a little. "I suppose so," she says. "But isn't it exciting, too? I wonder why they decided on this particular person?"

"Who knows," Akira says. "But I guess at least this means we can stop looking for the Phantom Thieves at Shujin."

"What do you mean?" Makoto asks.

"Well," Akira says. "Just--why would anyone _here_ have a grudge against Madarame?"

"I guess that's true," Makoto says. "Although... I don't know." She looks thoughtful. "At least we definitely know that Ann Takamaki can't have been involved. The calling card was sent while we were all still in class."

Futaba, incidentally, had been the one to deliver it. They might have asked Yusuke if he'd still been at all on speaking terms with Madarame, but that ship had sailed a while ago. So Futaba had gone down during the afternoon, hacked a couple security cameras to make sure they wouldn't capture her face, and left a stack of copied calling cards when no one was looking at her, and where they'd be sure to be seen after she left.

(Akira had gotten a series of anxious text messages from her at about 1:30, followed by a single triumphant _IT'S DONE!!!_ that practically radiated giddy relief)

"So what does that mean?" Haru asks. "If it wasn't anyone at school here, are we going to stop trying to figure out who the Phantom Thieves are?"

Akira realizes he's holding his breath, waiting for Makoto to give her answer. The plan today had only been to try and throw suspicion off Ann, but having Makoto give up completely would be a big weight off his mind.

"We'll see," Makoto says at last. She has her own phone out by now, and from where Akira's standing, he can see that she's googling _Ichiryusai Madarame Phantom Thieves_. "You're probably right, Akira. There's probably no one here that would have been able to send this artist a calling card, but..." She shrugs. "I'm curious now."

"Curious," Akira repeats.

Makoto nods, scrolling through the google results.

Curious.

Akira keeps his expression blank, trying not to think that a Makoto who is personally interested in the Phantom Thieves is probably more dangerous to them than a Makoto who is just investigating because someone else had asked her to. Sending the calling card to Madarame had been absolutely necessary, but Akira's suddenly worried that it might have backfired in terms of getting suspicion off them.

"I want to read up on this a little bit more," Makoto says. "We can talk about it over lunch tomorrow."

"Sounds good," Haru says.

"Yeah," Akira says. "See you guys then."

They split up and go their separate ways then, and Akira takes his own phone out of his bag. There are texts waiting for him in the Phantom Thief group chat, a couple more from Yu, a concerned one from Dojima and an excited one from Nanako. Apparently, among the group of people that knows who the Thieves are and what they do, news has already started to spread. 

Right. He shakes his head and tries to banish worries about Makoto and her search for the Phantom Thieves for right now. He's not going to worry about whether she's going to want his help in finding them, or how deeply he maybe _should_ be involved, to keep tabs on what's going on. It doesn't matter right now.

What matters right this second is that he's a member of the Phantom Thieves, and that they have a heart to steal.

-//-

> **Makoto**
> 
> Haru, do you mind if I ask you something about Akira?
> 
> Go ahead :)
> 
> You said earlier that you met him at the exhibit for that artist who's just been sent a calling card, right?
> 
> Yes. I think they actually knew each other already, and I stepped in when I saw Madarame trying to get Akira kicked out
> 
> It probably wasn't any of my business, but I think it worked out :)
> 
> Why do you ask?
> 
> No reason. I'm probably just overthinking it
> 
> It's just...
> 
> If Madarame doesn't like Akira, then it's not exactly true that there's no one in Shujin that has a grudge against him, right?
> 
> ...
> 
> Well
> 
> I'm definitely overthinking this, aren't I?
> 
> Actually, I was just going to point out that Kamoshida also started those rumors about him at the beginning of the year
> 
> Oh
> 
> Oh no

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who's ready for Akira to be able to rejoin the Phantom Thieves? Because I am, I _100% am_.
> 
> Also! It seems like a lot of people were interested in seeing something in the Forearmed-but-it's-set-in-Inaba that I mentioned last chapter. So since I'm also pretty excited about this, I'm probably going to put some thought into how that would look, and post a oneshot of some variety next month to celebrate the fact that SOMEHOW, December 19th will be the one year anniversary of this series. Crazy.


	18. May 28-May 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahahahahaha when I started this chapter I thought I knew where it was going and then I got to the end and realized I that I did not know at all
> 
> O.o

_May 28_

_Lunch_

-//-

> **Phantom Thief Finders (And Garden Club)**
> 
> **Akira:** Is it okay if I duck out of lunch today?
> 
> That's fine! Did something come up?
> 
> **Akira:** Kind of? Sorry, it's a whole... thing :/
> 
> **Makoto:** I think the two of us can handle the plants for one day
> 
> ...
> 
> **Akira:**...
> 
> I will make sure the plants are still alive when you get back, Akira
> 
> **Akira:** :)
> 
> **Makoto:** Thanks, you two

> **Makoto**
> 
> Do you think that was suspicious, Makoto?
> 
> Do you think it's something Phantom Thief related? Or is he just busy at lunch?
> 
> I'm inclined to be suspicious, just because of the timing and the calling card being sent to Madarame yesterday
> 
> But?
> 
> But I was wrong once, with Ann Takamaki, and I don't want to jump to conclusions a second time
> 
> Especially because Akira is our friend
> 
> Makoto?
> 
> Sorry, I was thinking
> 
> He is a friend, isn't he? 
> 
> Yes!
> 
> Let's talk about this over lunch today. Akira won't be there anyway, and I have a feeling this is going to get a little bit complicated

Haru and Makoto meet on the roof during lunch, as they usually do, but the mood is heavy.

Haru doesn't feel the same way about the Phantom Thieves that Makoto does. She's known that from the beginning, when Makoto had talked about turning them into the principal, and _Haru_ had thought--

Well, she'd thought that it would be nice if it were true. It would be _nice_ if the Phantom Thieves could really do what people are saying they did to Kamoshida. If they could do it again, to--well, to somebody else...

For the first time, though, Haru thinks that she and Makoto are absolutely on the same page about the Phantom Thieves. If Akira really is one of them, then Haru is hurt and a little bit angry that he's been lying to them. 

"The first thing we need to do," Makoto announces. "Is to find out if Akira actually is a part of the Phantom Thieves. Or if we're just being overly suspcious."

"Do you want to confront him about it?" Haru asks. "Like you did yesterday with Ann?"

"I'm considering it," Makoto says. "But if we're wrong, then I'd be accusing him of lying about it ever since we met, and I'd rather have some evidence. More than just the coincidence of Kamoshida and Madarame both having a bad history with him."

"It does seem a little bit tenuous," Haru says. "I was thinking about it a lot last night." She can't make up her mind whether they're jumping to conclusions on the thinnest possible coincidence, or if Akira really is the _only_ one with a connection to both people the Phantom Thieves have targeted so far. 

"So was I," Makoto says. "And do you know what I kept thinking about?"

"No," Haru says.

"That if he _is_ a part of the Phantom Thieves," Makoto says. "Then why is he trying to help us find them?"

"I don't know," Haru says. "But judging from your tone, I think you have an idea."

"I do," Makoto says. "And I think the answer is that this is the best place for him to hide."

It makes more sense than anything Haru can think of, but it still hurts a little to hear. "That's true," she says cautiously. "We're lucky we noticed the connection at all. He probably could have gone all without either of us noticing, if he'd been just a little bit luckier."

Both of them are quiet for a little bit. It's a bad feeling to sit here and wonder if their friend really _is_ their friend, or if he's just been pretending so that they won't be suspicious of him.

"I think I might not have been taking this Phantom Thief issue as seriously as I should have been," Makoto says eventually. "Assuming of course that we're actually right about Akira being part of the Phantom Thieves--"

"Of course," Haru agrees quickly.

"Assuming that we're right," Makoto says again. "Then this is a _lot_ of effort to go to just to avoid a little bit of trouble over hanging some cards up on the school walls. But if the Phantom Thieves can... if they actually _can_ steal a person's heart, that might actually be something he'd have a good reason to try and cover up." She sounds like she can't believe she's actually saying any of this out loud.

"Maybe we'll have a better idea of whether that's real soon," Haru says. "If Madarame confesses the same way that Kamoshida did, that might be more proof that the Phantom Thieves can do what they say they do."

"Agreed," Makoto says. "And since they've already sent out their calling cards, the change of heart will _probably_ happen soon." She frowns. "If it's actually real. And if it works the same way the second time as it did the first."

"We should wait to do anything until we see whether anything happens to Madarame, then," Haru says. 

Makoto nods. "You're probably right," she admits. "I don't like the idea of overreacting, if this is just going to be a prank of some kind. But..."

"But what?" Haru asks.

"But what if he really _can_ \--"

Makoto cuts off abruptly, face red, looking like she can't even force herself to finish the sentence.

"If he really can steal hearts?" Haru asks, finishing it for her.

"Yes," Makoto says. "I know it sounds--stupid. But if he really can steal hearts, then it doesn't feel right to sit back and just let it happen without trying to stop him. Doesn't it?"

Haru hesitates. She's thinking, honestly, about the day she'd first met Akira, at Madarame's exhibit. The look on the artist's face, and the tone in his voice. The way everything about him seemed to radiate actual _contempt_ when he spoke to Akira. Haru doesn't think that a nice person could possibly look at another person with the kind of anger that she'd seen in Madarame that day. Even if there's some kind of history between the two of them, even if Akira _had_ done something to annoy him...

She's still firmly on Akira's side. 

"Well I guess there's nothing we could do, anyway," Makoto says when Haru doesn't answer, not looking completely happy with this. "And it's not like people don't know about it. The calling card is all over the news."

"That's true," Haru says. Which is actually a little bit crazy, if it's true that Akira _is_ one of the Phantom Thieves. He's so... quiet, most of the time. At least around most people. Haru has seen him once or twice in the halls with his friends, and sometimes he seems like he opens up a little bit when he's up here with them, working on the gardening. But most of the time?

Most of the time, it's just--hard to imagine someone like him making the news. Which the Phantom Thieves definitely _have_ , even if it's most of it is borderline tabloid coverage.

"Alright," Makoto says. "Let's... give it some time. We'll see what happens with Madarame--if _anything_ happens--" and she looks, Haru thinks, like she is almost afraid to admit the possibility that anything could happen. "And then we'll decide what we're going to do after that."

-//-

_May 28_

_After School_

-//-

"Does anyone else have the feeling that Akira's been looking forward to this a little bit too much?" Ryuji asks.

Akira (who _is,_ in fact, probably a little bit too excited) turns around and grins at him. "You'd be excited too," he points out. "If it was you, I mean. Sitting out of metaverse trips is definitely _not_ fun."

Ryuji barks a laugh and nods. "Alright," he says. "Yeah, that sounds like it would suck."

The two of them, along with Ann and Morgana, are walking together toward the Shibuya station where they're about to go into Madarame's Palace for the last time. Hopefully the last time. Well--either they'll steal the Treasure and the Palace will collapse, or they'll fail to steal the Treasure and they won't be able to come back and try again anyway. Morgana has been vague about what would happen if they don't get the Treasure on the first try, but Akira doesn't think he sounds all that optimistic about getting a second chance.

So one way or another, they're heading to Madarame's Palace for the last time. _Awesome_.

"Aren't you nervous at all?" Ann asks Akira.

"About what?" Akira says. "Madarame's Shadow?"

"Well--yeah." She frowns. "It's going to be pretty tough, right?"

"Way tougher than Kamoshida's was, probably," Morgana says.

"Right," Ann says. "Exactly. So--aren't you at least a little bit worried?"

The truth is that Akira is actually a lot worried. But he's worried about what's going to happen _after_ the Shadow is gone. Stealing Kamoshida's Treasure had led to him confessing what he'd done and leaving Shujin for good. There hadn't been any downside, and Akira's happy with how things had gone.

But stealing Madarame's heart? No matter what happens next, Yusuke's whole life is going to turn upside down, and so _yes_ , Akira's worried.

He's trying hard not to be, though. Or at least, he's trying not to show it. He knows how to fight Shadows, and they're going to do that. After it's over, then... well, then he'll have to figure out how to help Yusuke cope with the changes in the real world.

(it's just that fighting the Shadow seems so much easier)

(...and also a lot more fun)

"I don't think that it's ever _completely_ safe in the metaverse," Akira says, because the look on Ann's face tells him that she's still waiting for an answer. Whatever problems Yusuke is going to have to deal with after they steal Madarame's heart, it's something they'll have to figure out later. Right now is for focusing on the Palace and his Treasure. "But that's kind of the fun, right?"

Morgana sighs. " _Fun_ , he says," the cat mutters. "Fun."

"Well it kind of is," Ryuji points out. "Come on, I think I see Futaba already waiting." He runs ahead, to where Futaba is, actually, waiting in their usual Shibuya meeting spot. 

"Is Yusuke meeting us here too?" Morgana asks, as the rest of them follow Ryuji at a more normal speed.

"Yeah," Akira says. "Since the alarm level's already going to be high when we go in today, I figured it might be better to all go in together. It might be more dangerous for him to go in from inside the atelier on his own."

They hang out and wait for a while, until Yusuke eventually comes running up to join them, and then all of them go together into the Palace. 

Akira hasn't been back to Madarame's Palace in a while, obviously, and there's something heavier in the atmosphere today than he remembers seeing before. Even when Madarame had seen him that first time and been absolutely enraged, it hadn't felt quite this bad.

It might have felt foreboding, except that everything in Akira feels like it's surging to life now that he's back in the metaverse. He's been stuck in the real world for ages, worrying about his friends, and not able to actually do anything. Now that he's here, he can feel Arsene buzzing up against the front of his mind, his collection of other Persona awake and as ready for the upcoming fight as he is.

"So I guess someone else should probably lead the way," he says, after a brief pause while he takes in the Palace, his Persona, the familiar weight of his mask on his face. "I'm not sure where exactly the Treasure is."

The rest of the Thieves do, though, and they take Akira on what Futaba deems a speedrun through the Palace. The rest of them already know exactly where they're going, and also where the stronger Shadows are that they're better off avoiding. As they rush through the Palace, ducking past Shadows and around corners, the Phantom Thieves take the time to point out some of the weirder things they've had to deal with during their infiltration--the place where they'd been stuck until Akira got Madarame's door open in the real world, the series of paintings they'd had to jump in and out of to get through the room, even the one set of bathrooms that no one has been able to figure out a good explanation for.

(Do the Shadows use it? It's hard to imagine them needing a bathroom, and if they need one here, why haven't there ever been bathrooms in other parts of the metaverse?)

(And if it's _not_ for the Shadows, why does Madarame spend so much time thinking about bathrooms that they had manifested in his Palace?)

This conversation starts out completely serious, but by the time they're ten minutes into the _but why bathrooms_ conversation, a lot of the tension has gone out of their infiltration. Which doesn't mean that anyone's forgotten why they'd come, or why this is important, but at least the nervous energy has been sapped away. Probably a good thing, Akira decides, as they finally reach the place where the Treasure is. Being nervous isn't going to help, just like this being his first time this far into the Palace isn't going to help, just like thinking about what happens to Yusuke after this _isn't going to help_.

So--yeah. It's good, probably, that everyone's managed to calm down a little. 

"Everyone ready for Madarame heist version three?" Futaba asks, when they pause to regroup at a safe room a little way away from the Treasure.

"I can't believe we've stolen from this guy three times," Ryuji says. "I'm almost starting to feel bad for the dude."

"I'm not," Futaba says. "He's a jerk."

"Okay," Ryuji admits. "I don't _actually_ feel bad for him, but--come on." He smirks, and for a second he is absolutely the one that looks like he's enjoying himself the most here. "This is the third time we're stealing from him, and it's going to be the best one yet! Isn't anyone else getting excited about this?"

"I'm excited," Akira says.

"Of course _you're_ excited," Morgana says. "You've been sitting around at home keeping out of trouble, why wouldn't you be excited about this?"

Akira's face almost _hurts_ with how hard he's trying to fight off a smile. He's used to the people back home just inherently understanding that he brings trouble with him wherever he goes, and that it's not a thing he can do anything about. It feels good to have found friends in Tokyo that understand the same thing.

"Okay," he says, instead of trying to figure out how to put any of that into words. "So.... I guess we should go now."

-//-

_May 27_

_After School_

-//-

There's a plan for stealing the Treasure without being spotted by Madarame's Shadow--it involves a crane and a temporary power blackout--but Yusuke isn't really surprised when this plan doesn't go off without a hitch. They manage to take the Treasure (which is of course another _Sayuri_ ), sure, but they don't make it all the way back out of the Palace before Madarame corners them.

"Do you want to be in this fight, Fox?" Akira asks quietly, as Madarame rants and raves at the six of them. No one's really listening. Yusuke knows that he doesn't want to hear any more of his sensei's anger and self centeredness, and it doesn't look like anyone else particularly wants to, either. 

"I want to be in this," Yusuke tells his friend immediately.

"You sure?" Akira asks. "This is--"

"I know what this is," Yusuke says quickly. "I _know_." This is the man that had raised him, and taught him, and then eventually thrown him away. This is a false artist and a definite plagiarist, and Yusuke has known that for a long, long time.

It's just that until today, he's never been able to do anything about it.

"Okay," Akira says. "Then let's get ready to fight. Panther, Mona, are you okay to fight too?"

"Ready!" Morgana calls.

"Me too," Ann adds.

"Am I sitting out?" Ryuji asks, looking crestfallen.

"Be ready to tag in if someone gets hurt," Akira tells him. "But for now, yeah. Are you going to be okay with that?"

Ryuji hesitates, but then he nods. "Yeah," he says. "I guess, if that's what we need, then yeah."

"He's about to attack, everyone!" Futaba calls. "Brace!"

And then the fight starts. It's unexpectedly easier than Yusuke would have expected, actually. Easier _emotionally_ , at least, because the first thing Madarame's Shadow does is take on the form of several paintings floating together instead of something even vaguely humanoid.

There's a painting with an eye on it. A painting with a mouth. Another one with a nose. And it's so much easier for Yusuke to just focus on them like that, to think about remembering not to use ice attacks against the eye portraits because they absorb those elements, or to avoid hitting or shooting the mouth and risking _those_ being absorbed. An eye? That doesn't mean anything. A mouth? It barely even looks like Madarame's. There's nothing personal enough in these paintings to hurt.

(Except for when they attack, obviously, but Yusuke knows how to handle that kind of pain)

The fight goes slowly at first, until Futaba figures out that they need to take all the paintings out at the same time to stop them from regenerating health. Akira calls out attacks to Yusuke and Ann and Morgana, and Yusuke's glad to let someone else handle keeping tracking of how much health each individual painting has left. When they finally all collapse--

Yusuke winces a little as the five individual paintings reform into Madarame's Shadow. He's visibly tired and injured, and for a second Yusuke feels something in him twist.

"Time for an all out attack!" Morgana says. "Should we, Joker?"

"Go for it," Akira says, and the other three rush forward to attack. Yusuke doesn't, though. He feels--he doesn't have a word for how exactly he feels, actually. But it's not great, to see his sensei on the ground like that, and Yusuke finds himself rooted to the ground and unable to move.

"Fox!" Futaba shouts. "Don't just stand there, go help everyone else!"

"But--" he glances over his shoulder at where Futaba and Ryuji are standing just outside the range of the Shadow's attacks. He drops his voice without quite meaning to, and says, "That's my sensei, Oracle."

"It's his Shadow, Fox," she reminds him. "So if you don't like what's going on here, the only way you're going to be able to help him is by fighting, and getting his Treasure out of here."

It's a good point, and Yusuke shakes himself out of his frozen hesitation. He jumps in after the rest of the group, and tries not to think about it too hard as they do some actual damage to his sensei's Shadow. Then they back up, brace for retaliation, and get ready to do it all over again.

The Shadow is a lot stronger than Kamoshida's had been. Ryuji jumps in for Ann halfway through, and Morgana switches from attacks and _garus_ to just keeping the rest of the group healed. Madarame's Shadow goes back to his paintings form (which is a relief), and then pulls out a new attack that for some reason covers Yusuke with black paint.

"What does that do?" Ryuji asks, pausing mid-swing with his weapon still held halfway out in front of him.

"Skull!" Ann shouts from behind them. " _Focus!"_

"Right," he mutters, and manages an attack that is maybe slightly less effective than it would have been without the distraction.

"Seriously, though," Akira says, taking advantage of Ryuji's attack and his accompanying shout of _yaaaaah!_ to pause and look back at Yusuke. "What _is_ that? Are you okay to keep going?"

"I think so?" Yusuke says, holding his dripping arms out in front of him for inspection. "I think I'll need a shower later, but I don't feel any weaker or anything."

"Okay," Akira says. "If that changes, let me know."

Yusuke nods, but for at least a little while it _really_ doesn't feel like the paint is going to interfere with the battle. It feels a little gross, but he can still move, and his mask keeps it away from his eyes so that he can still see clearly. He manages a couple solid hits, dodges an attack, and then--

And then Madarame's Shadow lashes out at him with an _ice_ attack, and the pain is enough to send Yusuke to his knees. An _ice_ attack--the only element that can usually hit him that hard is fire, so the sheer surprise of this leaves Yusuke gasping for breath and struggling to come up with a response to his teammates' urgent questions.

Futaba manages an answer while Yusuke is still reeling, which is good because it sounds like she has a better handle of what's going on than he does. 

"He's down, but still pretty much okay!" she calls. "But the attack hit him _really_ hard, like he was weak to it. I think the paint might be acting like--I don't know. But I think we assume he's going to be weak to everything until that paint comes off."

"Betrayed by _paint_ ," Yusuke mutters. "Also--ow."

Ryuji comes and helps Yusuke to his feet, which he's grateful for, and then from behind them Ann calls, "Do you think it would help if we could get that paint onto the Shadow?"

"Uh--" Akira dodges a new attack, then glances back at her. "Yes, but I don't think we can manage it while we're fighting him."

"I got it," Ann says. 

"We'll keep him busy," Akira says. "Fox, just--" They look at each other for a second. "Just keep your guard up for now," Akira finishes. "And Oracle, let us know if the Shadow's going to hit us with the paint that again."

"Will do," Futaba says. "The good news is I don't think the Shadow has much health left. Maybe half?"

"Great," Akira says. "We can work with that."

The fight continues after that. The paint covering Yusuke eventually drips off, which is a big help, and then a few seconds after that Ann manages to get up behind the Shadow and coat _him_ with paint--much to the Shadow's surprise.

There's a beat or two as everyone, Madarame's Shadow included, looks at where he's standing there dripping dark, wet paint onto the ground. "Did it... work?" Yusuke asks cautiously.

"I think so!" Futaba says. "He should be weak to whatever you guys want to hit him with now."

And he _is_ , which makes the rest of the battle almost laughably easy. When it's over, and Madarame's Shadow is on the ground begging for mercy, Yusuke takes a long breath in and lets it out again. He feels like a weight that has been resting on his shoulders for so long that he's forgotten it's even _there_ has suddenly been lifted away.

"Someone should go to talk to him," Morgana says, after a brief pause where everyone seems to be focused on catching their breath.

Everyone looks at Yusuke. Yusuke looks at Akira. He knows it makes the most sense for him to be the one to have this conversation, but he has no idea what to say.

"We'll both go," Akira says, and so the two of them head over to Madarame's Shadow, where--

Where, suddenly, Yusuke _does_ know what to say. Standing between Madarame's Shadow and Akira, looking down at the distorted Shadow of the man that had raised him, suddenly there are so many questions Yusuke wants to ask that the only problem is figuring out how to start. 

" _Why_?" he asks. "What was so important that you had to lie and cheat and steal to get it? Wasn't the art enough?"

"Don't be so _naive_ ," the Shadow spits at him. "Art is nothing more than a commodity. I never did anything more than take advantage of a system that already exists to buy and sell anyone too stupid to try and _win_."

"That's not--" Yusuke can feel himself getting angry, and tries as hard as he possibly can to reign it in. "That's not how it works at all. I mean--I don't know, but--" 

( _But it's not right)_

He hasn't noticed Akira moving up to stand beside him until he hears his friend's voice, but there he suddenly is. "I don't know a lot about art," Akira says. "But I've known Yusuke for a long time now. And I know enough to know that _whatever_ art is supposed to be, he has it figured it out a lot better than you do." There's a harsh edge of anger in his voice, and for a second it takes Yusuke a little bit by surprise.

(Then he hears, behind it, the undertone of hurt. And he remembers that for all the trouble Akira can and _does_ get into, he had once been a kid facing the full force of Madarame's condescending anger)

(This had been a personal fight for both of them, after all)

"You don't really know anything," Akira says. "And Yusuke's a much better artist than you are."

He says this so casually that Yusuke feels very slightly embarrassed. But also a little proud, and--grateful. 

"Sensei," he says, even though the Shadow isn't _really_ his sensei, and even though the real Madarame maybe hadn't been that good of a teacher all this time. But it's--hard. Somehow. To let that go. "Sensei, I..." Just ask. The answer, he has a feeling, won't be something he wants to hear, but he has to _ask_. "I don't understand how you could paint something like the _Sayuri_ and still think the way you do about art."

He half knows the answer already, because he'd seen what Madarame's Treasure had solidified into when they first stole it. He'd seen yet _another_ version of the _Sayuri_ , this one painted with the same addition of an infant in the woman's arm. And he halfway knows the truth, but can't quite bring himself to believe it.

"You really think that was my painting?" Madarame's Shadow asks.

(and the part of Yuske still clinging to belief in his teacher _shatters_ )

The rest of it almost (almost) doesn't matter. The story of the way Madarame had let his mother die, then stolen her work and her son, how he'd covered up the one part of the painting that might have given his crime away, it almost can't hurt him any more than he already has been.

When it's all over, and Yusuke knows absolutely everything about what Madarame had done to him, to his mother, to her _art_ , he nods. And then in a voice that is so calm he doesn't believe for a second that it's coming out of his mouth, Yusuke says, "You've done horrible things, Sensei. You know..." he hesitates, then presses on, hoping for the best. "You _have_ to know that what you've done is wrong."

And... there. Is that just the smallest flicker of acknowledgment? Guilt? Yusuke isn't sure. He hopes that it is.

"You have to make up for it," Akira adds. "Whatever that takes. But at least you have to let everyone know what you've done." He steps back, glancing at Yusuke and jerking his head back toward where the rest of the Phantom Thieves are waiting. "Come on, Yusuke," he says quietly. "Let's steal his Treasure and get out of here."

"Yes," Yusuke says, turning to follow him. "Let's."

"Wait!"

The word bursts from Madarame before they've gone more than a step or two, and Yusuke turns back at once, surprised by the abruptness of the cry.

"Be careful," Madarame says.

"Careful?" Yusuke repeats. "After all this--you tell me that you want to be careful?" 

(He's acting like he _cares?_ Now?)

"You aren't the only ones to come here," Madarame's Shadow says. "And the one in the black mask is dangerous."

"You know about the Black Mask?" Akira demands.

"Has he been here?" Yusuke adds.

"He keeps an eye on all of us," Madarame's Shadow says.

"All of _who_?" Yusuke asks, genuinely confused.

Madarame's Shadow shakes his head. "All of us involved with--"

"Guys!" Futaba shouts from back by the others. "The Palace is about to get _really_ unstable!"

And sure enough, Yusuke _can_ feel tremors in the ground that remind him a lot of how Futaba's Pyramid and Kamoshida's Castle had fallen apart, but--

"She's right," Akira says, and even though his tone is reluctant, he grabs Yusuke's elbow and starts both of them running. "We can't afford to stay and ask questions."

"But he knows more about the Black Mask!" Yusuke protests.

By this point they're close enough for everyone else to overhear. "He knows about _that_?" Ryuji demands. "We can't just run off now if he might know who that guy is!"

"At this point," Futaba says. "We can either run, or we can stay here asking questions and die. Come _on_ , Skull!"

The Palace is starting to fall apart around them. Ryuji takes a look at the crumbling architecture, and--

They _run_.

-//-

_May 27_

_Evening_

-//-

After they get out of the Palace, Akira insists that Yusuke come back to Leblanc with himself, Futaba, and Morgana.

"You can't go back after what just happened," Akira tells him. "You can--I don't know. You can spend the night or something."

Yusuke, who looks exhausted and close to being dead on his feet, doesn't even bother to argue. They're all tired, of course, and Futaba especially is walking like someone that doesn't usually run but has recently been forced to sprint out of a collapsing Palace. Yusuke's tiredness, however, seems to be beyond being just physically exhausted. They've won, but Akira doesn't feel any of the same relief that he had when they finished Futaba's Palace, or the giddy excitement of defeating Kamoshida's Palace. Winning in this case means that Yusuke's life is never going to be the same.

He doesn't regret what they did, but it doesn't feel as easy in this case.

At Yongen-Jaya, Akira steers Futaba back to the Sakura house.

"Are you sure?" she asks. "I can talk to Sojiro about.... You know." She pauses to yawn. "About Yusuke staying."

"I'll do it," he says, putting his hands on her shoulders and physically turning her in the direction of the house. "You look like you're about to pass out."

"Mmmm..." she makes a thoughtful noise, like she's trying to decide if this is worth arguing, then nods. "I'll see you guys in the morning," she says. "Night, 'kira. And Yusuke."

Morgana hops out of Akira's bag and down to the street. "I'll go with her," he tells Akira. "So you two can talk about... whatever."

Akira nods, and then goes back to Leblanc with Yusuke.

Sojiro is alone behind the counter when they walk in, and he raises his eyebrows at Akira. 

Akira smiles sheepishly, recognizing the expression immediately. It's almost exactly the same as Dojima's _there had better be an explanation coming soon_ look.

"This is one of your friends, right?" Sojiro says. "From that group that came by before."

"Yeah," Akira says. "This is Yusuke. He's, uh..." How does he even start explaining? "He's having some problems at home, and I told him he could stay here for a night or two. If--" He suddenly can't read Sojiro's expression, and isn't sure whether this is going over well. "If that's okay?"

Yusuke has sat down in one of the booths by this point, and is staring at his hands where they rest on the table in front of him. Akira's not completely sure, but he has a feeling that the sight of him looking generally sad and tired is what eventually makes Sojiro nod.

"But this can't be a permanent thing," he adds. "If he doesn't have anywhere else to be after a couple of days, come talk to me about it and we'll figure something out."

Akira had honestly expected to have an argument on his hands just to convince Sojiro to let Yusuke stay for a couple nights, so the (relatively) easy agreement and the offer of even more help surprises him a little. But maybe it shouldn't have? He's seen the way Sojiro acts like he would literally die to keep Futaba safe, and after the whole thing with Nanako, Sojiro had been okay with turning the other way if Akira wants to talk to his family again. He does a pretty good job of _acting_ like he doesn't care about anyone, but maybe that's all it really is. Just an act.

"Thanks," Akira says.

Sojiro glances again at Yusuke. "Maybe just get him upstairs," he says. "He looks like he's about to fall asleep at my table."

"Right," Akira agrees, and goes to help Yusuke up to the attic. When they're up there, both of them sitting and facing each other, he asks, "So are you feeling... okay, at all?"

Yusuke stirs himself a little. "Yes," he says slowly. "I think... well, I'm not going to fall apart on you. I just can't believe that all this time, the _Sayuri_ wasn't even painted by Madarame."

"I know it's your favorite painting and everything," Akira says. "But does it really matter--sorry." He makes a face, because obviously it _does_ matter to Yusuke. Still, he's in deep enough already that he decides to go ahead and just finish the question. "Does it matter who painted it?" he asks. "It's still the same painting. It's just that somebody else made it."

"I know," Yusuke says. "I _know_ that it's the same painting, but..." He leans forward, gesturing broadly with one arm. "It's not just that it's a well done painting, although it _is_. It's--whenever I looked at it, for as long as I could remember, I had this feeling of..." He seems to be struggling to find the right words. "Of comfort, I think? Or love, or... I don't know. Does that sound stupid, Akira?"

"No," Akira says honestly. "I saw the painting you made of Ann, and how you put parts of her on the canvas that you shouldn't have been able to see." They should probably talk at some point about how Yusuke apparently just has the ability to paint things from the metaverse, but today is not the right day for that. For right now it feels like enough to just accept it without asking too many questions, and move on. "I guess my point is that if you could paint something like that, it makes sense that you could see things in other peoples' art that the rest of us couldn't."

"It does sort of feel like that," Yusuke admits. "It's the same kind of real." He sighs. "But I saw that, and I thought that Madarame could--feel those things. Under everything else he's done, I thought--deep down, he had to care about someone other than himself. Or he wouldn't even have been able to paint that."

Akira nods. He still doesn't completely understand, and doubts that he ever will. Art and paintings are a language that Yusuke speaks a lot better than he does. But he can at least understand that Yusuke had seen this painting as evidence that Madarame was more than just the lying, plagiarizing, self-centered man that the rest of his life showed him to be. He'd been able to cling onto the idea that there was some decency in the person that raised him because he was also the person who had painted the _Sayuri_.

"I'm really sorry, Yusuke," he says.

"I should have known earlier," Yusuke says. "I should have been able to figure it out."

"There's nothing wrong with trusting the people that are supposed to take care of you," Akira points out. "He's the one that was wrong for not being worth trusting." 

When Yusuke still looks unconvinced, he tries another tactic. "And it's not like _nobody_ made that painting with all those things you felt. Your mom painted it."

Yusuke nods. "Do you know," he says slowly. "I've never thought about her much. It's not like--" He gives Akira a slightly apologetic look. "Your parents lived long enough for you to remember them. My mother died before I was old enough to know her. My earliest memories are all from after I came to live with Madarame. I don't know anything about her."

"It sounds like you do, though?" Akira says tentatively. "Because of the _Sayuri_. You might not have realized you were getting to know her through that, but--you were."

Yusuke is absolutely silent for several minutes. Akira keeps wanting to interrupt the quiet and say something, but holds himself back each time. Yusuke is obviously thinking hard, and Akira has said everything that he thinks might actually help. 

"What happened to Madarame's Treasure?" Yusuke asks after a while.

"Ann has it," Akira tells him. "I guess she's getting kind of the collection. Why?"

"I was just thinking," Yusuke says. "His Treasure shows how the _Sayuri_ looked originally. Before he added his... edits."

"Before he painted over the baby, you mean," Akira says.

Yusuke nods. "So we have that, and it shows exactly how my mother originally painted it. And we'll always have that. Which is good, because--" And everything in his expression and his tone emanate disbelief that he's actually about to say this. "I... want to undo what Madarame did to the original."

"What--you mean like restore it?" Akira asks.

"No." Yusuke makes a dismissive gesture. "Art restoration is a field I know nothing about. But my mother painted that as a self-portrait. Herself and--and me. So if I add the child back in, that would make it sort of my self portrait as well as hers." 

"Are you sure you want to, though?" Akira asks. "I mean--I know this is important to you." And he'd have thought that the _Sayuri_ was one painting Yusuke would never have been able to touch."

"It is," Yusuke agrees. "And normally I would never want to risk ruining it, but..." He hesitates, just for a second, before his face hardens in determination. "But as far as the rest of the world is concerned, this painting was stolen years ago. The only people that know what really happened to it are the Phantom Thieves, and I don't think that any of us would care if I want to paint over parts of it."

"Probably not," Akira agrees.

"And I just want to undo what Madarame did to it," Yusuke says. "I want to make this a painting that belongs to me and my mother. Not to him." He takes a deep breath. "What do you think?"

"I think that sounds like a good idea," Akira says honestly.

"Yes," Yusuke says. "I'll ask Ann if she can bring the real _Sayuri_ and Sensei's Treasure by. I'll paint over what Madarame did to the real one, and the Treasure..." he shrugs. "I don't know. I'd like to find somewhere that it could be hung up, so that people can see what my mother intended. I'll think of something for that later."

He stands up, expression set. "Yes. That is what I want to do."

Akira grins. "I can't wait to see what the _Sayuri_ looks like when you're done with it, honestly," he says. 

"Akira," Yusuke says, fixing the whole of his determined attention on Akira now. "I know that everything we've done recently, with Madarame's Palace and the _Sayuri_ copies, has been very much to help me. And I know that it hasn't been easy for you to be stuck in the real world while the rest of us were able to go into the Palace. So I wanted to just--thank you. For being here, and for helping me. And for inviting me to stay while I figure things out, and just--" He nods. "For being my friend for so long. I don't know how I would have handled everything that's happened if I'd had to do it on my own."

"Of course," Akira says, feeling simultaneously embarrassed over what feels like unearned praise, and relieved that Yusuke seems to have a little bit of spirit back in him. "Yusuke, you're my best friend. When something's going on with you, I'm going to do whatever I can to help."

"I know," Yusuke says. "But--thank you, anyway."

And there's a sudden... feeling, like a warmth inside his chest. And as Akira becomes aware of it, he realizes that he can hear Lavenza's voice in his ear.

_I am thou, thou art I... thou hast turned a vow into a blood oath. Thy bond shall become the wings of rebellion and break the yoke of thy heart. Thou hast awakened to the ultimate secret of the Emperor, granting thee infinite power..._

And while Akira is still trying to figure out what on Earth _that_ is supposed to mean, Yusuke makes a noise of sudden surprise that draws Akira's attention back to him. 

"What's the matter?" he asks.

"I think..." Yusuke puts a hand over his chest, looking surprised and grateful and overwhelmed all at once. "I think my Persona has... changed. Grown?"

"Grown into what?" Akira asks. The way Yusuke looks, he doesn't think this is a bad thing, but it's still not something he's actually seen before.

"Kamu Susano," Yusuke says, immediately. The name practically falls from his tongue, and Akira remembers what it was like when he first awakened Arsene--like his Persona's name had been burned into his mind. Like Kamu Susano has been burned into Yusuke's in place of where Goemon has always been.

"And you're okay with that?" Akira asks tentatively, just to check. He's aware that Persona _can_ change, because once or twice he's seen members of the Investigation Team show up to fight with completely different Persona than what they'd had before. But he'd never actually asked Yu how that happened, and it's the first time it's happened to one of his friends.

"Mmm," Yusuke says, more of a thoughtful hum than an actual word. "Yes. I am."

The way that he says it leaves Akira with absolutely no room to doubt him, so instead he just nods and--when Sojiro calls for him a moment later--goes downstairs feeling thoughtful as well.

"You two doing alright up there?" Sojiro asks.

"Yeah," Akira says. "Just talking some stuff out." 

"And everything is..." Sojiro waves a vague hand, and looks like he does not quite know how to ask what he wants to know. "Whatever's going on with his parents, he's going to be okay going back to them? That trouble you said he's having at home, it's something he'll be able to handle?"

"He's living with a guardian, actually," Akira says. "Not his parents."

"That doesn't answer my question," Sojiro says. "Is he going to be safe going home when he eventually does?"

"Yes," Akira says. "It's just--" How much can he say? "They've been fighting about some stuff. Some kind of important stuff, but not anything that I think he'd actually hurt Yusuke over." Not unless his Shadow trying to kill them all in the metaverse counts. "I think Yusuke is going to be moving into the dorm at his school soon, though. So it won't even be an issue after that"

Sojiro doesn't answer for so long that Akira feels himself wanting to squirm. But when his guardian finally says something, it's just a terse instruction to bring some food upstairs. "Your friend looks like he's half starved."

"Will do," Akira says, and runs back upstairs with the indicated food before Sojiro can think of any other pointed questions to ask. 

The rest of the night passes relatively quietly. Futaba texts Akira that Morgana is going to be stay in her room overnight (and then she texts him again about an hour later to ask _does he always want to go to bed this early??_ ), so Akira and Yusuke sit up and talk, just the two of them, until way later than they probably should.

When Akira finally dozes off a little after two in the morning, he's pretty sure that both of them are feeling better than they have since before they even found out that Madarame had a Palace. Things feel, finally, like they're starting to go a little bit right. 

-//-

_May 29_

_Morning_

-//-

Yu wakes up two days after news breaks of the Phantom Thief calling card, checks his phone for news from Akira, and finds nothing.

He debates waiting for news, but decides eventually that he just doesn't have it in him to wait that much longer. He knows that the Phantom Thieves only have one day to get the target's Treasure from their Palace after sending their calling card. So either they'd succeeded yesterday, or it's too late to do anything.

Yu calls Akira early, hoping to catch him before school, and is rewarded with a very tired Akira who picks up with a muffled whining sound that makes Yu laugh.

"What was that?" he asks.

"That's my _why are you calling me when I'm still in bed_ noise," Akira says. "Why are you awake?"

"Why are you in bed?" Yu counters. "It's not that early."

"It is _definitely_ that early," Akira counters.

But Yu hears some rustling noises that sound like Akira sitting up and maybe even getting out of bed, and his next words are hushed but slightly more alert. "Seriously though, Yu," he says. "Why are you calling so early?"

"I wanted to check in," Yu says honestly, as the sounds of Akira thumping down a set of stairs come drifting through the phone speakers. "I saw that Yusuke's guardian got a calling card two days ago, so I assume you were busy stealing his Treasure yesterday. Did everything go okay?"

"Yeah," Akira says. "It did. Nobody got hurt or anything, we took the Treasure, and then... I _was_ going to call you. But Yusuke came back to Leblanc with me because of--you know, _everything_."

Yu does not know what _everything_ means, exactly, but it's not a huge leap of logic to figure out that fighting Madarame's Shadow must have been more painful for Yusuke than other fights. 

"We were just kind of up late talking," Akira says. "And I was going to call you today, just not this early."

"You never have liked mornings," Yu muses.

"I _hate_ mornings," Akira says. "That was the one good thing about you leaving Inaba, you stopped waking me up at _ungodly early hours_."

This makes Yu actually laugh out loud, and when Akira goes on, Yu can hear a smile in his voice.

"If I remember to call you right after we steal the Treasure next time," he says. "Do you promise not to call me first thing in the morning the day after?"

"I promise," Yu says. "Do you want me to hang up now?"

There's a short pause.

"Well," Akira says, and he sounds more cautious, less upbeat now. "Since you're on the phone anyway, I actually wanted to ask if you ever..." he hesitates. "If you ever wondered whether you were doing the right thing, when you went into the TV World?"

Yu's first thought is that this is too much of a question this early in the morning, but his second thought is that he probably brought this on himself by calling Akira so early in the first place. 

"Sometimes I did," he says slowly. "But it was usually while we were trying to figure out how to find someone, or how to find the person responsible for pushing people into the TV. It sounds like maybe you're questioning whether you did the right thing about changing Madarame's heart?"

"Kind of?" Akira says. "I mean--not really, but also sort of yes?" He sighs. "I don't know. I think that objectively, he probably needed to have his heart changed. But because we did that, Yusuke found out some stuff that kind of broke how he's always seen Madarame, and now he's probably going to be on his own after Madarame's confession because there's no _way_ they're going back to living together after all that, and also I keep wondering--I mean, it felt _really good_ to be able to beat his Shadow. Like, when we actually took him down, it felt better than it did with Kamoshida. And I don't know if that's just me being selfish because Madarame's always been such a jerk to me. But if I _was_ just being selfish, then does that mean that maybe we shouldn't have done that? I just--I don't know."

All this comes out in a rush, and Yu lets the stream of Akira's worries wash over him for a few seconds. He doesn't interrupt, and lets Akira finish before he says anything at all. To give himself time to think, and because... well, honestly that had been kind of a lot.

"Did you talk to Yusuke about any of this?" he asks at last.

"Not really," Akira says. "He kind of has his own stuff to worry about right now."

"Well does he seem at all like he regrets taking Madarame's Treasure?" Yu asks.

"No," Akira admits. "I think he's... well, he's not okay with everything _now_. But it seems like he's going to be, eventually. After he's had some time to process everything."

"So I don't think you don't need to worry about him being on his own now," Yu says. "First of all because he _is_ going to be okay, and second of all because I know you wouldn't have done this in the first place if he wasn't okay with it. Right?"

"Well--yeah."

"So there you go then," Yu says. "And as for whether you're bein selfish or whatever for the fact that you liked taking him down--" He pauses. He's thinking back to the year he'd lived in Inaba, when Nanako had been trapped in the TV World, and Yusuke had run away from his sensei to help them rescue her. When Madarame had eventually tracked Yusuke back to the Dojima house, the sheer _anger_ he'd directed at Akira had made a deep impression on Yu. Maybe Madarame couldn't have been blamed for not knowing the details of the TV World, or why Yusuke had decided it was important to come back and help rescue Nanako, but there's no reason for an adult to treat any kid the way Madarame had treated Akira.

"I think it's natural that you would have felt a lot of satisfaction from taking Madarame's Shadow down," he tells Akira. "I don't think there's anything wrong or selfish about that."

"You're sure?" Akira asks.

"Pretty sure," Yu says. "If you wanted to go around attacking him in the real world I'd be worried, but I really don't think you'd want to do that."

"No," Akira says. "Definitely not."

"Then I think you're fine," Yu says. "You needed to take his Shadow down to steal his Treasure. And if he's not going to be saying things about you like--well, the kinds of things he's _always_ said about you, then I'm not surprised you felt good about that."

Akira lets out a deep breath, and sounds better when he says, "Thanks, Yu."

"Of course," Yu says. "So--"

Akira sucks in a sudden breath, like he's just remembered something, and says, "Oh, also--Yusuke's Persona evolved last night."

"Good," Yu says, because he's seen that happen enough times with his friends to recognize what that means. "See? Whatever else he's going through, I'd say that's a sigh he doesn't blame you for what happened to Madarame."

"Oh," Akira says. "Good. But, uh--" 

"Bu what?"

"I don't exactly understand what that means when it happens," Akira admits. "Is it because of something he did, or...?"

Yu is pretty sure that Margaret had mentioned all this in one of her talks about bonds and what they meant, but maybe Akira hasn't been getting as much of that from Caroline and Justine. He doesn't know what it means for the twins to be in the Velvet Room instead of Lavenza (who pretty clearly _should_ have been). But it does seem like there are some parts of all this that Akira should have had explained to him, that he's kind of just stumbling through instead.

"Yu?" Akira says.

"Sorry," Yu says, when he realizes that he's going to have to explain this particular part of being a wild card to Akira. "Yeah, it's--so you know the bonds you have with other people?"

"Yes," Akira says. "With like... everyone that's important to me except you."

Which feels about as unfair today as it had five years ago, but now isn't the time to worry about that.

"Right," Yu says. "So when a bond with someone that fights Shadows with you gets to the point where..." He tries to think of the right way to explain it. "Where you can't be any closer, and your bond can't even be broken--that's when their Persona will evolve."

"Oh," Akira says. "I didn't realize that's what it meant." But he sounds pleased, Yu thinks, and much happier than he had at the start of this phone call. "Thanks."

"Any time," Yu says. "But shouldn't you be getting to school soon?"

Akira groans theatrically. 

"And call Dojima and Nanako too," Yu reminds him. "They know what it means that Madarame got a calling card."

"I will," Akira promises.

"Today, Akira."

"I _will_ ," he insists. "Yu, I promise, but Sojiro's heading over to get the cafe ready to open, so I need to hang up. I'll call Dojima and Nanako after school, and we should meet up in Mementos soon, but for now--"

"I got it, I got it," Yu says with a laugh. "Bye, Akira."

The call ends without a goodbye from the other end, and Yu lets out a breath. It doesn't sound like Akira has had an easy time of it with Madarame's Palace, but he's out the other side, and things are going to be okay. Everyone's in one piece, Akira included. Good.

-//-

_May 30_

_Lunch_

-//-

"Morning," Akira says, as he comes up to the roof and waves at Haru and Makoto. 

"Good morning, Akira," Haru says. 

"Sorry I had to skip gardening Saturday," he says, setting his stuff down and heading over to join Haru by the gardening plot. "Some personal stuff came up."

"It's fine," Makoto says.

Something in her tone makes Akira pause--it seems cold, for some reason, and he's not sure what he's done to her to make her upset with him. Skipping their usual lunchtime meeting Saturday, maybe? Well, there's nothing he can do about that, since he'd spent it huddled up with Ann, Ryuji, and Morgana making plans for their Palace raid. Or maybe she's still upset about the way he'd talked about her dad the day before that, after they'd questioned Ann together? He'd been really hoping she'd forget about that before today.

"Is something wrong?" Akira asks catiously.

"No," Makoto says. "No, no, not at all."

But she still sounds just that little bit off. "Are you sure?" Akira presses. "Because if there's something wrong..." He lets the sentence trail off.

"Just... a little bit of a stressful morning," Makoto says, with a strained smile. "I'm sorry."

Something feels wrong here. Makoto's eyes are worried, and Haru is watching the confrontation anxiously to see what Akira's going to say. 

"Okay," he says, and he's acutely aware of the way Arsene has started buzzing in the back of his skull. "Sure." There's something-- _something_ here, and Akira catches himself shifting into the frame of mind he uses in Palaces. Hyper-observant for new threats, thinking as quickly as he can, ready to react. 

(But _why_? Haru and Makoto aren't enemies. They're the closest he's gotten since coming to Tokyo to having _normal_ friends)

(Except that he trusts Arsene, _his other self_ , and if he's on high alert it's because something's going on that Akira hasn't figured out yet)

He tilts his face slightly to one side, feeling the reassuring weight of his glasses settling over his face like his mask, hiding his eyes from the other two. Something is going on here, and now it's just a question of trying to figure out what.

"Sorry for making a big deal out of it," he tells Makoto, in a tone that sounds honestly casual even in his own ears. "Are the plants doing okay, Haru?"

"Oh yes," she says, sounding relieved that the conversation has moved on. "And I think a few of the vegetables might actually be ready to harvest in a couple of days. See, over here--" She points, and Akira nods, and they move on to talking about gardening. A couple of the plants Haru points out are actually close to being ready for harvest, but some of the others need more time. Akira points out the signs that show they're not ready, talking her through the things he's figured out with Nanako over the past five years. 

Haru relaxes under the normality of the conversation. Makoto half-listens to the gardening talk as she flips through class notes. Akira chatters about plants. Arsene watches.

And then, when everything has calmed down and seems like it's getting back to normal, Akira says, "So anything new about the Phantom Thieves?"

There's a pause just long enough to feel wrong. Akira keeps his face pointed at the vegetables they've been examining, but behind his glasses his eyes flick sideways to watch their reactions. Haru has gone very still, and Makoto fumbles her pencil. 

"Nothing new," Makoto says.

"You didn't talk about them at all Saturday while I wasn't here?" Akira asks.

"Well," Haru says slowly. "Mostly we were just discussing the calling card that got sent to Madarame. Just--gossip, I suppose. No new leads."

"Oh yeah," Akira says. "The calling card. Pretty interesting, right?"

"That's one way of putting it," Makoto says. 

"Do you think they can actually do it?" Akira asks.

"Take the artist's heart?" Makoto says. "Well--I don't know."

And that's interesting, Akira thinks, because a few days ago when he'd talked to her after the questioning of Ann, she'd sounded a lot less convinced that the Phantom Thieves were anything better than vandals. "I guess we'll find out," he says lightly. 

"I suppose we will," Makoto answers.

Haru gives a nervous little laugh, and seems to be trying to think of something else--anything else--to say. "The weather's getting a little bad," she says. "Isn't it?"

Akira hesitates on the edge of pushing this farther, of trying to figure out what exactly is going on. Then he shakes his head, pulls back, and decides that it's too much to try for right now. They're friends, and whatever else is going on, that's important. He's not going to risk messing things up between them while he still doesn't have anything to go on other than _something feels wrong._ "It doesn't seem so bad," he says. "I heard it's supposed to rain tonight, though."

"Do you think we need to do anything to cover the plants before then?"

"I don't think so," Akira says. "It's not supposed to rain hard, everything we have here should be okay."

"What about the fog?" Haru asks. "Is that going to do anything to the plants?"

"I don't think it's supposed to be foggy tonight."

"It's foggy now," Makoto says.

Akira looks up. The skies are a clear, bright blue. There's no sign of fog at all. 

"It's..." Arsene is almost shouting at him now. "Foggy?"

"It's getting pretty bad," Haru says.

It clicks then, about ten minutes later than it should. The thing that Arsene had noticed that Akira hadn't. The feeling in the air that he's gotten so used to that it hadn't even hit him until now that it shouldn't be here. He lifts his hands to his face, pulls off his glasses with hands that are suddenly shaking, and sees the thick, yellow fog.

"Oh no," he breathes.

"Akira?" Haru says.

He shakes his head and springs to his feet. Here? Now? _Why_? 

"What's wrong?" Makoto asks, with a little more sharpness than Haru had asked her question with. 

"I don't--know, exactly." But this is fog he's only ever seen in one place on Earth, and only under some very specific circumstances. He raises his phone with the hand that's not still holding his glasses, and snaps a picture.

> **Yusuke Kitagawa, Rise Kujikawa, Yu Narukami, Futaba Sakura**
> 
> _[Image: The view from the top of Shujin Academy, obscured by fog]_
> 
> I don't know what's going on, but everyone needs to get to my school, as soon as you can
> 
> I would have texted sooner, but I was wearing my glasses and couldn't see this at all

-//-

Yu sees the text in the middle of a class. He stands up so abruptly that the professor pauses in his lecture--Yu stops for just a second to mumble a brief apology--then grabs his things and hurries out.

-//-

Rise sees it while in rehearsal, and she recognizes the fog. The noise she makes is almost like a squeak, and then she fumbles out an excuse that's not nearly good enough before hurrying away.

-//-

Yusuke and Futaba are sitting together in Leblanc--he's decided to skip school for the day, and she'd come over from the house to keep him company--when both of their phones vibrate at once. 

"What's that mean?" Futaba asks. "Why's he sending a picture of fog? And why does it matter that he was wearing glasses?"

Yusuke is already on his feet, running up to the attic where he'd left his metaverse supplies in Akira's room the night before. 

"Yusuke!" she shouts after him, even as she goes running up too, ignoring Sojiro's muttered comments. "Yusuke, what does it _mean_?"

"It means that something bad is about to happen," Yusuke says. "Because--has he ever told you that he doesn't actually need those glasses?"

"Wha--"

"Someone made them for him when he was a kid," Yusuke continues. "So that he could see through the TV World fog when it started to come into the real world."

"But..." 

She works it out for herself, and her eyes go wide.

"Yes," Yusuke says, grabbing the last of his things and turning to go running back down. "That fog should definitely not be here."

-//-

Akira's phone loses signal just as he sends his last text, and from somewhere nearby a bell starts to toll. He shoved his glasses back onto his face, blinking at the instant clarity that comes with it. Now that he's paying attention to it, he can recognize the feeling that he's come to associate over the years with Inaba. There's something different to it, something he never fails to notice whenever he has to leave home or come back. Inaba has been almost consumed by the metaverse once, and that kind of thing leaves a mark. Akira does not think that it's good news at _all_ to be feeling something like that here in Tokyo.

He looks back at the others and says, "We should--" Should _what,_ though? He has no idea what's going on, or how, or why, just that it is definitely bad news. "We should get inside," he says, on the general idea that it might at least be better to get out of the fog.

"Not until you tell us why you're so ups-- _ah!_ "

"What?" He turns around at Makoto's sudden shriek, only to see her looking sheepish and slightly freaked out. "What's wrong, what did you see?"

"Nothing," she says.

He stares at her.

"I... thought I saw a spider," she admits.

"Oh." This takes a little bit of the tension out of him, even though it shouldn't, because the fog is still there, the feeling of _Inaba_ is still there, the unknown threat of whatever going on is _still definitely there_.

But at least a spider isn't making things worse.

He manages, eventually, to convince them to head back inside.

But on the other side of the door is a school completely different from the one they'd left behind. Akira recognizes Yasogami immediately, and his feeling that everything here is _wrong_ grows about ten times stronger.

-//-

It takes Akira about five minutes between sending his texts, and opening the roof door to realize that they're not where they should be. It takes Yusuke and Futaba nearly half an hour to negotiate the trains and get to Shujin, and yet--although neither of them know it--the two of them arrive at nearly the exact same moment. The fog, reaching across time and space from one school to another, is already having an affect on the spacetime around it. 

"Oh," Yusuke says, squinting up at the school through the unnatural, swirling fog.

"What is this?" Futaba says, joining him in his observation. "It doesn't look like it did when we were here before."

"No it doesn't," Yusuke agrees. "We should go inside."

"Are you sure?" Futaba asks.

"No."

But he starts walking anyway, then running when he sees that Futaba is coming with him, and the two of them dart through the front gates without another word of conversation.

-//-

Rise gets to the school five minutes later, and Yu another twelve minutes after that, but by then it's too late. The fog has cleared as quickly as it had descended, Shujin is back to normal, and there's no path the two of them can take to follow the Phantom Thieves into the place--the _haven in the_ _rift_ , to borrow a particular turn of phrase--where they have gone.

(Which, all things considered, is probably good. It certainly wouldn't have made things any _less_ confusing, for the two of them to be there)

(...again)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...
> 
> Welcome to the Forewarned/Forearmed take on Persona Q! I was planning to have this _way, way, way_ later, during the P5 culture festival, but while I was writing the scene with Akira and Haru and Makoto on the roof, I just kind of thought... wouldn't it be fun to just do it now? Wouldn't it be fun to have pre-Persona Haru and Makoto going _?????_ Wouldn't it be fun to procrastinate on Kaneshiro's Palace and spend a few chapters doing this? So here we go! Hopefully it's not a terrible, terrible mistake xD
> 
> Also, quick side note because I think I've put this in comments before but maybe not in an author's note? Unlike the actual PQ, which is a crossover between the P3 and P4 casts, this will be a crossover between the P4 and P5 casts. Just because I feel like there's so much more potential for drama there (and because I want smol Akira and Phantom Thief Akira to meet so incredibly badly, shh).
> 
> And for anyone that's slightly confused about what's happening there at the end, either because I explained it awkwardly (whoops) or because you haven't played PQ (10/10, would recommend), I will be doing some more explaining in the next chapter :)
> 
> Edit 1/10/21: If you are not interested in reading the PQ section, either because you don't care or you're trying to avoid spoilers, you can skip directly to chapter 26 when the P5 content starts back up. I left a comment on that chapter explaining the important parts to this fic in a way that doesn't spoil PQ.


	19. Persona Q - Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters this week, woo!
> 
> ...it's been so long since I had a day off that I genuinely forgot Thanksgiving was not Saturday, so I ended up rushing to get chapter 18 out. And then I was like oh no I need to get something for the ACTUAL weekend, and here we go xD
> 
> If anyone's wondering, for the P4 cast this takes place between chapters 14 and 15 of Forewarned.

_May 30, 2016_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Akira's brain short circuits, just for a second, when he sees where they are. This is _absolutely_ Yasogami, exactly the same as it had looked all of the year before when he was a student there. Almost exactly the same, anyway--there are banners and decorations hung up here like it's in the middle of a culture festival. And, when he stops and actually pays attention to the people in the halls around them, he can tell that none of them seem actually real. By this point he knows a cognition when he sees one, and the halls here are full of them.

So... there had been a fog like Inaba's fog, and now he's in what seems like a copy of Yasogami, in the middle of what might possibly be a culture festival.

...with Haru and Makoto.

This is going to be really hard to explain.

"Do you know something about what's happening here?" Makoto demands, and Akira takes a second to think through how much he wants to give away with his answer before he says anything to either of them.

"I know where we are," he says carefully. "Kind of. This looks like the school I was at last year."

"But--" Haru looks genuinely confused. "How is that possible?"

"I don't know," Akira says. "I have _no_ idea." He rubs his face, thinking hard. He's hoping that the texts he sent would have gotten to Yu (or to any of the others, really, but he'd really love Yu's opinion on this) before his signal cut out, but he's not wildly optimistic that they'd have been able to get here in time. And judging by the view out the window, which looks very much like Inaba and not at _all_ like Tokyo, Akira doesn't think anyone's going to be able to get in from outside now.

Which means that his only hope of anyone else being around to help is with the Persona-users that had already been in the school. Ann, Ryuji, and Morgana usually eat lunch together, Akira knows, so he heads down toward the second year classrooms. Haru and Makoto follow him down, still occasionally peppering him with questions that Akira pretends not to know how to answer.

He finds the other three Phantom Thieves are standing in the hall looking _deeply_ confused and all talking at once. Morgana is in his metaverse form, which at least confirms a few things Akira had already been pretty sure of, but he hears Haru gasp from behind him at the sight. 

...he's going to have to explain all of this to the two of them, isn't he? There's just no way they're going to get through this without an explanation, no matter how awkward it's going to be for Akira personally. 

He takes a deep breath and turns around. Haru is still looking at Morgana like she's trying to process what she's seeing, but Makoto's gaze is fixed on Akira.

"So I don't know exactly what's going on here," he says. "But I've seen things sort of like this before."

"Like what, exactly?" Makoto demands. "What is this, Akira?"

"It's... part of the metaverse," Akira says. "I think." He rushes through his explanation as quickly as he can, about how the metaverse is a sort of other dimension, where cognition and the subconscious matter as much as physics do in the real world. He tells them about Shadows, and then Persona, wincing as he sees their disbelief growing. 

"I know it sounds crazy," Akira says, when he's finished. By this point the rest of the Thieves have joined them in the conversation, although Akira's the only one saying much. Even Futaba and Yusuke have come running up from the first floor, which is a relief because whatever's going on, Akira would rather face it with the whole team there. 

(He's not quite sure how they'd managed to get here in time, but he's not going to question it)

He would have liked it if Yu and Rise could have gotten here too, and Haru and Makoto are an unexpected addition, but... well, they're going to have to find a way to make whatever this is work with the people they have. 

Akira looks at Makoto, at her flat out disbelief, and does his best to think of something that would be convincing enough by her standards. "Look," he says to Makoto and Haru. "There's obviously there's something, uh... not exactly natural going on here. You can see that for yourselves."

"But..." Makoto shakes her head. 

"I know," Akira says. "And I'm really sorry you two got dragged into this, I really am. But everything I just explained to you is absolutely true."

"Does this have anything to do with the Phantom Thieves?" Haru asks.

Akira opens his mouth. Closes it again. Says, "...what?"

"We noticed last week that you were the only one with a reason to have a grudge against both Kamoshida and Madarame," Haru says. "It feels like actually changing someone's heart might be related to this cognition world you're trying to explain."

"Oh," Akira says. "I, uh--" At least this explains why Haru had been nervous and Makoto had seemed so cool toward him earlier, even before the fog rolled in and everything had gone crazy. He nods. "Yeah. We're... we're the Phantom Thieves."

Makoto's expression goes hard and flat, and she turns then and walks off. Akira makes a move to go after her, but Haru half stands in his way and gives him an apologetic smile as she does so. It doesn't quite reach her eyes. "I think you might want to give her some time to think this through before you keep trying to talk to her," she says.

"I'm sorry," Akira tells her. "But... I couldn't exactly say anything."

"I understand why you wouldn't want to admit to being a Phantom Thief," Haru says quietly. "Especially after Makoto joined us, and started talking about handing the all of you over to the principal. But you didn't have to pretend you were _helping_."

"He was trying to protect the rest of us," Ann says, stepping forward and raising her voice. 

"Ann," Akira says, more quietly. "Now's probably not a great time to be arguing over this--"

"But Makoto had me figured out last week," Ann says. "If it hadn't been for Akira sitting in on that meeting I had with her, I'd probably have already been turned into Kobayakawa."

Haru hesitates. "I suppose that's true," she says.

"Haru," Akira says. "If you want to be upset with me, that's--I completely understand. I didn't want to start lying, I honestly felt terrible about it, but... it felt like the only thing I _could_ do."

"I need to think about it," Haru says quietly.

"I get it," Akira says. "But in the meantime, we need to start trying to figure out what's going on here, and how to get back to Shujin in the real world. Do you want to help us start looking around?"

Haru hesitates, and then nods.

"Cool," Akira says He feels terrible, and is sure that everyone else must be able to see it. "Awesome, so--I guess we can split up and start looking around for anything suspicious?" He does a quick head count. "There's seven of us here now, so we can do two groups of two and one group of three, and have each group look at one floor?"

Everyone seems okay with this, so Yusuke and Futaba head upstairs to the third floor, Ann, Ryuji, and Morgana stay on the second floor, and Akira goes down to the first floor with Haru.

(He tries to convince himself that this isn't awkward at all, and completely fails)

"So this is really where you went to school last year?" Haru asks after a while. She's not looking at him, but Akira jumps at the chance to make small talk anyway.

"Kind of," he says. "This is obviously a copy and not the real thing, but it's a _good_ copy."

"Isn't that a little strange?" Haru asks. "To be stuck in a copy of the place you used to go to school?" 

"Not really," Akira says. "I've seen this place turned into way weirder things."

"Like what?" she asks.

He shrugs. "One time it got turned into the setting for a fighting tournament, and that was way weirder. At least this time it actually looks like a normal school."

"Do I want to ask about...?"

"Probably not," Akira says, with a ghost of a smile. "The tournament was not a lot of fun."

They take their time walking along the first floor hallway, looking over everything they can think of that might look suspicious. They check the exits, and Akira takes it as a good sign that not even Haru seems all that surprised when there's no way out of the school. She would have been completely within her rights to freak out at that point, but instead she stays calm and just shakes her head, saying that they'll have to find another out way before going back to the search.

She still doesn't seem completely happy with him, which Akira can't blame her for at all, but at least she seems to have taken the situation as a whole in stride. That's going to be pretty important, Akira knows, because he's not under any illusions that it's going to be easy or painless to get out of here. If all his previous experience with the metaverse has taught him anything at all, it's that whatever they're going to have to do here will be _hard_.

They do a lap of the first floor, and have just about decided to go back upstairs and touch base with the others when something makes Akira hesitate.

"Does that classroom over there look different to you than the others?" he asks Haru, pointing toward an Alice in Wonderland display.

She considers it carefully. "I think it looks a little bit more well done than most of the other ones," she says. "Is that what you mean?"

"I don't know, exactly," Akira says slowly. "It just seems..." He trails off and shrugs. "We could at least go in and check it out."

"I don't see any reason not to," Haru agrees.

The two of them head inside, and Akira realizes as they get close that he's bracing himself for--something. He's not sure exactly what, but something in his subconscious knows that as they enter he needs to plant himself firmly and half-close his eyes, prepping himself for--

The ground seems to lurch and spin around the two of them as he and Haru enter the classroom. Haru squeaks and stumbles, but Akira is ready for the way the world tilts around them, and even for the eye watering blur of the sudden spin. He catches Haru before she can fall, at the same moment that his clothes change suddenly to his metaverse outfit.

"Th-thanks," Haru says. She looks up at him and her face freezes into a sudden expression of surprise.

"Uh," Akira says. "So--yeah. This happens in the metaverse when... well, basically when it starts getting dangerous." He lets go of her and takes a step or two back, suddenly self conscious about the mask and the long, dark coat. "Maybe we should leave."

"Do you think it's going to be that bad?" Haru asks.

"I think there's probably going to be Shadows," Akira answers honestly. "And since you can't fight them, I don't know how safe it's going to be for you."

Haru shakes her head. "We should at least look around a little bit," she says. " _You_ can fight, right?"

"Well--yeah."

"Then let's at least go a little way in," Haru says. "Just to see how bad it is."

It occurs to Akira that Haru would probably be really good at fighting Shadows, if she had a Persona. 

(And then a second later, he remembers the P-1 Tournament, when Nanako had been the only person in Inaba without a Persona to be there. He hasn't seen anyone else from Shujin around, so is it possible that Makoto and Haru might be able to awaken Persona too?)

"Then at least stay close," Akira says, deciding that if Haru's all for this, he's not going to be the one to tell her she can't go any further. 

She nods, and the two of them walk a little bit further into what turns out to be an absolute labyrinth.

They don't make it very far, but it's enough to figure out a few important things. First of all, that the Shadows here look a lot more like the ones Akira remembers from Inaba than the ones he's seen since coming to Tokyo. Second, that fighting here is a lot harder than fighting anywhere else. Akira's not sure why, maybe it's just the way that this corner of the metaverse works. But whatever the reason, he's hitting a lot less hard than he's used to, and that's definitely something worth knowing.

He'd be worried, except that Arsene doesn't feel like there's anything's actually wrong with him. He's just... weaker than before. It'll take some time for them to get stronger together, but Akira's done it once and he's sure that they can do it again.

Third--and most worrying to him--is that the only Persona he has with him right now is Arsene even though there _definitely_ should be more. That's definitely going to be something he has to figure out sooner rather than later.

"Okay," he says to Haru, after only a couple of fights. "I think--definitely the rest of this needs to wait until more of the group is here." He's not too beaten up yet, but it's better to get out now while they still can, before he takes a critical hit, or a bless attack that Arene would be weak to.

Haru nods, looking thoughtful. "That was... very interesting," she says, as they start to walk back out of the labyrinth. "Is that always what fighting Shadows is like?"

"It's a little different here," Akira says. "I can't really put it into words, but it just--feels different."

"But the... Persona," Haru says. "You always use that?"

"Yeah," Akira says. "And, you know. Regular weapons and airsoft guns."

"Really?"

Akira nods.

"It looks very dangerous," Haru says.

"It can be," Akira says. "I mean, most people I know that fight Shadows have scars from it. We have healing in here, but if you don't use it before you go back to the real world, then it takes time for injuries to heal just like anything else. But I've never known anyone that died, or anything. And since you don't have a Persona, you probably won't be anywhere near the actual fighting. You don't have to worry."

"I wasn't worried," Haru says quickly. "I was just--thinking."

She doesn't elaborate on what she'd been thinking about, and Akira doesn't press. Instead, when they're out of the labyrinth and in the school hallway, he suggests that they head upstairs to let everyone else know what they'd found.

Up on the second floor, everyone is already gathered together and talking animatedly. Makoto's back too, luckily--Akira has only barely had time to start worrying that she might have found another labyrinth area full of Shadows, and here she is looking still annoyed but at least in one piece.

They compare notes. Apparently Yusuke and Futaba had found Makoto upstairs, and somehow convinced her to come back with them. Akira and Haru explain the labyrinth they'd found--Akira provides most of the more technical information, but Haru had seen the labyrinth just like he had, and is able to give a pretty good description of what it had looked and felt like.

"So I'm thinking we should all go back there now," Akira says. "And take a look around with the full team. Everyone okay with that?"

"What about us?" Makoto asks.

Akira hesitates. Makoto and Haru are not Phantom Thieves, and while he's more or less fallen into the role of leader for everyone else, they don't have any reason to listen to him or even trust him. "It's going to be dangerous in there for anyone that can't fight," he tells her honestly. "I think it would probably be better if you guys could wait outside."

Makoto watches him for a couple seconds. Then she nods. "But I want to talk to you later," she says. "I've been thinking, and I have--a lot of questions."

"I'd be shocked if you didn't," Akira says. "That's fair, definitely. But--labyrinth first."

They head for the labyrinth, but before they even get to the stairs, something catches Akira's gaze. There's one booth in the hall here that apparently no one else has thought was important, but the color--bright, eye catching blue--immediately draws his attention. He catches Yusuke by the shoulder and says, "There's something I want to check out, okay? It'll just be a minute, and Haru knows where the labyrinth is."

"I'll cover for you," Yusuke says, and Akira nods his thanks before slipping away to the Velvet Room colored booth.

The booth itself barely looks large enough to fit two people, but when Akira ducks inside he finds something a _lot_ larger. Stairs lead up to nowhere from a large, open space where two people are sitting, just in front of two doors being held shut by a series of four chains, each secured by a heavy lock. Akira recognizes both of them immediately as Margaret and Marie, which is surprising for two reasons. First of all, because Margaret hasn't been seen by anyone, not even Yu, for years. And second of all because it's been at least that long since Marie left the Velvet Room.

"What _is_ this?" Akira asks, more to himself than anyone else. It's an expression of absolute surprise, because this room is just so completely different from either version of the Velvet Room that Akira has seen before.

"Ah," Margaret says, and Akira stops what he's doing--which is craning his neck upward to try and take in all of the Velvet Room--and looks back at her. "So you're the one that's come."

"Hi," Akira says, walking quickly toward him. "Yeah, I guess so. It wasn't exactly by choice, but I'm here and I'm really hoping you can tell me what's going on?" If he'd gotten the chance to talk to Margaret even yesterday, he'd have had a whole lot of questions for her about Lavenza and the twins. But now there's something new and urgent, and he _has_ to deal with that first. Lavenza and the twins are... personal. Right this second, he has five Phantom Thieves counting on him to figure out what's happening here, and he has Haru and Makoto to protect (and, hopefully, to prove himself to). That _has_ to come first.

Marie looks up at Margaret from where she's lying on the ground. "I thought he wasn't allowed in here," she says.

"I'm not leaving," Akira says quickly. "I _need_ to know what's going on."

"Why are you so old?" Marie asks, pushing herself up and into a cross legged position.

"Uh," Akira says. He's thrown for a loop because first of all, how is that the biggest issue, and second of all, he's not old. "I don't think sixteen _is_ old, actually?"

"You're supposed to be like... twelve."

Akira kind of stares at her.

Margaret smiles. "I think I can shed some light on this issue at least," she says. "This is a haven in the rift, Trickster."

"What does that mean, exac--"

"It's a place where different times can come together," Margaret says. "And it seems that you've come from later in time than we are."

" _Oh_ ," Akira says. He thinks this through for a second. "So... you're still helping Yu. That's--everything in Inaba is still happening?"

"Exactly," Margaret says. "Yes."

"Okay," Akira mutters. "That's--wow."

"So to answer _your_ question, Marie," Margaret says. "He is not allowed access into the Velvet Room in the time that we come from. By this point, it seems that things have changed."

Akira nods. "I'm allowed to use the Velvet Room," he says. "For--you know. Fusions and things. So does this mean that we haven't met yet? If you're from 2011?"

"We have not," Margaret says. "Have you met me before?"

"A few times," Akira tells her. 

"Interesting," Margaret says.

"Interesting," Akira repeats. "Sure, yeah. But for right now, it sounds like we're all kind of stuck in this together, right? So do you think you can tell me anything about what's going on here?"

"Unfortunately not," Margaret says. "Just that there's something wrong here, which you have obviously been able to figure out for yourself already."

Akira bites back a curse, because he doesn't think that Margaret would appreciate hearing it, and says, "Do you think you can tell me anything about why I can't recruit any more Persona here, then? I'm used to having a bunch of them to choose from and now I only have Arsene. Is that--"

"It may be an affect of this place," Margaret says. "That much, I can look into for you."

"Thanks," Akira says. "That would be a big help, actually." He wishes that Margaret would tell him more, but it doesn't sound like she knows much more than _he_ does. "And we found this, uh, labyrinth thing downstairs with Shadows that we're going down to investigate. It seems like that might be a good place to find some kind of lead."

"More than likely," Margaret says. "If you learn anything, I ask that you come back here and share the information."

"Sure," Akira agrees. "And if we have a chance to talk later, when things have calmed down a little, there's--some more stuff I'd want the chance to ask you about." His first priority right now is figuring out how to get everyone home safely, but if there's time, he's also not going to pass up an opportunity to ask about Lavenza.

He turns to go, but Margaret calls after him.

"Trickster," she says.

He looks back at her.

"Nothing happens in this room without a reason," she says. "I know that in your future, you must be used to working with Lavenza in the Velvet Room," she says. "But if I've been called here now instead of her, then it's for a reason."

Akira hesitates. Then, very slowly, he says, "I... know what the reason is that she's not here." He doesn't look at Margaret. "She's gone. Hurt somewhere. I don't know, but she hasn't been there in the Velvet Room since I started going there."

He does risk a look up now, and Margaret's face is pale and surprised. Akira feels like crap for having to tell her this about Lavenza who _is_ , after all, her sister. 

"I'm going to find her," he says. "That's one of the reasons I need to go back. Because she's hurt somewhere and nobody else is... nobody else is even looking." He shakes his head, and keeps walking. Everyone else is waiting downstairs by the labyrinth, and he doesn't want to keep them waiting any longer.

Outside, no one comments on the fact that Akira's eyes are very slightly red, which he is overwhelmingly grateful for. They spend a couple minutes figuring out their formation, and determining that Futaba can actually use her Persona to navigate for them even while she's standing just outside the labyrinth--none of the rest of them can call theirs, but as soon as any of the Phantom Thieves go into the layrinth, Futaba's clothes change and she's able to summon Necronomicon. She argues for a while that she wants to come in with the rest of the Thieves, but gives in eventually when Akira pulls her aside and whispers that he doesn't want Haru and Makoto left alone. 

"They went up to the third floor anyway," Futaba protests. "I won't be able to keep that much of an eye on them, even if I'm here."

With everything else going on, Akira hadn't even actually noticed that the other two had gone upstairs. "When did that happen?" he asks.

"Five or ten minutes ago," Futaba says. "I guess they wanted to talk about..." She waves a hand vaguely. "You know. All this."

"Fair," Akira says. "But at least if they need something, or... I don't know, something happens and they start screaming, we'll have someone here for them to come to for help."

Futaba gives a heartfelt sigh and a dramatic roll of her eyes. "Fine," she says. 

" _Thank_ you," Akira says.

"Yeah, yeah. Just get in there already."

And so in they go, into the labyrinth.

-//-

_October 30, 2011_

_Morning_

-//-

Akira wakes up to the feeling of someone shaking his shoulder. He blinks, rubs at his eyes, and squints up at Yu. 

_"Mmph_ ," he mumbles, and tries to pull his blanket up over his face. "Yu, it's Sunday. No school."

"I know," Yu says. "But the culture festival is today. I thought you said that you wanted to come see it."

And sure, he had _yesterday_ when they were talking about everything Yu's school is doing, but now it is very early in the morning and Akira kind of just wants to go back to sleep. "I thought it started _later_ ," he complains.

"Come on," Yu says, and instead of answering he just pulls the blanket down and gives Akira a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. "You don't have to come, but if you decide that you want to after all, you'll have to be ready to leave with me."

"Fine," Akira says, and starts rooting around in their shared bedroom for clean clothes. Yu is already dressed in his Yasogami uniform, but Akira is slower in finding jeans and a hoodie that look like they've been recently washed. By the time he's done, Yu is shouting at him from downstairs that he needs to leave, so Akira grabs his bag and calls back that he's on his way.

Nanako is standing in the doorway of her room when Akira comes out, and he waves a good morning at her. "Are you coming with us?" he asks.

"No," she says. "Dad said he might take me to Junes, since he doesn't have to work. Are you going to tell Yu today?"

Akira knows immediately what she's talking about, but pretends he doesn't. "About Dojima talking you to Junes?" he says. 

" _No_ , Akira," Nanako says, and drops her voice. "About... you know. The TV stuff."

Akira glances downstairs, but Yu's not anywhere in sight. "I... maybe," he mumbles. Naoto had given him until November 8th to tell Yu himself that he is the Trickster, or else she's just going to do it herself. Akira still hasn't made up his mind how or even if he's going to do it, and there's barely a week left before her deadline.

"Akira!" Yu shouts again, and Akira half jumps. 

"I'll think about it more when I get home," he tells Nanako. "See you later."

He tries (hard) to force the decision out of his mind as he runs down the stairs two at a time to join Yu by the front door. "Sorry," he says. "I'm ready now."

They talk about unimportant things during the walk to the high school. Yu asks about the gardening Akira and Nanako have been doing, and Akira can talk about that for ages so he _does_. Then he asks Yu about what their class is doing for their festival display, which Yu answers by pulling a face.

"Is it a really horrible idea?" Akira asks, with sudden interest. 

"It's, uh... a group date cafe," Yu mutters.

"A what?" Akira says.

"So it's..." Yu still seems extremely reluctant to explain. "You were basically right before, actually. It's a horrible idea and you shouldn't really want to know anything else about it."

Akira immediately wants to know _everything_ about it, and opens his mouth to start asking questions.

"Oh look," Yu says, obviously relieved by a sudden distraction. "It's Yosuke."

And Teddie, Akira can't help but notice, which makes him tense involuntarily. Outside of his group of friends--Lavenza and Yusuke and Nanako--Teddie and Naoto are the only two people that know he can go into the TV World. They're the only two people that know he's the Trickster that Yu _hates_ so much.

...seeing either of them still feels pretty awkward, because of that.

He hovers a little bit behind Yu as they move as a group up to the second year classrooms, and it's not until they actually get there that Yu thinks to look back at Akira and say, "If you wanted to go around and look at some other stuff while we're setting up..."

"Yes, please," Akira says. He jumps at the chance to put some distance between himself and Teddie, to just not _think_ about TV World things for a couple of minutes. He hurries away, and goes off to explore the school on his own for a while.

This is the first time he's ever been inside Yasogami High, and Akira has to admit that he's a little bit curious. The whole place is a lot like his elementary school, kind of worn in and old but in a _good_ way. It's easy to imagine this school being old enough for Dojima to have gone here when _he_ was in high school, and Akira amuses himself for a little while trying to imagine what that had been like.

But that doesn't hold his attention for all that long, and there's only so much of the school to see. A lot of the displays are still being set up, which means that there's not that many interesting things to look at right now and before long Akira is _bored_. He wanders around, mind wandering, going back again and again to the problem of Yu and the TV World and how to tell the truth.

Which is maybe why he doesn't realize at first that anything's wrong. He doesn't really hear the tolling of a bell from outside the school, and he doesn't realize that the people around him are suddenly... not really people. 

(In another five years, he'll know to call them cognitions, but here and now he just thinks that they're _weird_ )

He does notice eventually, though. Stray bits of weirdness filter though his worried, swirling thoughts, and build up until he can't ignore it anymore. Akira stops, confused, and looks around him for the first time in a few minutes, actually taking in the details of his surroundings. It still looks like Yasogami, but not exactly the same _version_ of Yasogami, maybe?

Something fizzes inside him, and Akira feels his heart speed up. He doesn't know what's going on, and this is probably the worst possible time for something weird to start happening, but there's a part of him that just can't help feeling excited.

He doesn't know if this is TV World related, but figures it probably is because _everything_ weird lately has been TV World related. Which means that until he has a little bit more information, it would probably be a bad idea to run into Yu or any of his friends. They're around here somewhere, they have to be, so when Akira starts moving through the school again, he does it the same way he does in the TV World. Quietly, carefully, and with as much stealth as he can manage.

He's on the third floor, so he starts looking there. He sees a whole lot of the weird, fake looking students, and also a couple of people that do _not_ look fake. Off by themselves in a corner are two high school girls in unfamiliar uniforms, sitting together and talking in low, urgent tones. Akira watches them for a while, but doesn't see a way to get close enough to them to hear what they're saying without being spotted. So, reluctantly, he moves on. 

There's a third real looking person on the first floor two, and she is immediately a _lot_ more interesting to him than either of the first two had been. She looks a little bit younger than them--still years older than Akira, though--and is dressed in clothes so weird that they're either some kind of cosplay, or else...

A TV World costume. Like his and Yusuke's. And since he's already half convinced that this is something TV World related, that option doesn't seem like so much of a stretch.

Akira watches her from around a corner for a little while. She's sitting cross legged on top of an abandoned school desk, talking to someone he can't see. It's kind of hard to figure out what's going on from just her half of the conversation, especially from this far away, but Akira doesn't dare get any closer. After close to fifteen minutes of watching her, the only thing he's absolutely sure of is that the classroom she's sitting in front of has Shadows inside of it. She calls it a labyrinth a few times, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to him, and seems to be directing a group of people in a fight.

Akira has heard about Rise doing something like this for Yu's friends in the TV World, but this is the first time he's ever gotten to see it for himself. It looks _weird,_ but maybe it would be kind of helpful, too? Yu always seems to talk about Rise like what she does is really important, so maybe it is. Akira keeps watching, until eventually the question of what he's going to do next starts to feel more urgent.

He is not used to talking to other people in the TV World, but there's something about her that makes Akira instinctively _want_ to trust her. Part of it, he thinks, is seeing her in a costume. That makes her seem so much more like him and Yusuke, and so much less like Yu and his friends, that Akira's brain just keeps sorting her into the same space as Yusuke, Lavenza, and Nanako. He's never even seen her before in his life, but some part of him keeps saying _she's on my side._

The other part of it, though, is even weirder.

Akira has bonds with a few people by now. He has no idea what it _means_ , but he knows that they're important because Lavenza says that they are. And he knows how it feels when he's around those bonds, which is the same kind of feeling he's getting now, from this girl. Thin and vague, flickering like it's not sure if it's real, but there's definitely something there.

So it's partly her costume, partly that vague, foggy bond, and partly just curiosity that makes Akira lower his guard more than he should. He isn't careful enough, while he crouches low to the ground around the corner and watches her, to make sure he doesn't give her a chance to see _him_.

And then suddenly she looks up, and makes eye contact.

Startled, Akira scrambles backward and up onto his feet, then takes off _running_.

-//-

_May 30, 2016_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Futaba has a harder time navigating the Phantom Thieves through the labyrinth than she usually has in Palaces. There's just something about the place that makes it harder to handle, even with her Persona's help. There's so much _more_ to keep track of, is part of the problem--the Shadows here are all completely different than the ones in Tokyo, and there are some truly, _insanely_ powerful ones that patrol around the labyrinth in weird patterns. They call these F.O.E.s, and when they show up, the Phantom Thieves don't have any choice but to run if they want to make it out in one piece.

On top of all _that_ , there's the twisting of the labyrinth itself, with all its dead ends and passageways, and after about fifteen minutes Futaba announces that she can either keep track of the labyrinth's layout, _or_ she can watch out for the Shadows and F.O.E.s and advise them in battle. But she just can't do both.

"--and I'm really sorry about that," she finishes, feeling frustrated and upset with herself. "But if I keep trying to do both, I'm not going to be able to do either of them well, and you guys are going to get hurt."

"It's okay, Oracle," Akira says. "This place is weird, we all get it."

"Yeah," she says. "But--"

"It's _fine_ ," he assures her. "You keep watching out for Shadows, okay? We'll keep track of the layout."

"How?" Ryuji asks. "This place is a freaking maze."

Akira makes a humming, thoughtful noise. "Fox," he says. "Do you have a notebook or anything to write on?"

"Of course," Yusuke says. "Why?"

"I'm going to star making a map of where we've been," Akira says.

Futaba steers them toward an out of the way corner that doesn't seem like there are any Shadows around, and the group sits down to start their map and argue over the parts of the labyrinth that they've seen so far. They're bickering over whether one part had been two rights and then a left, or two _lefts_ and then a _right_ , when Futaba suddenly gets a prickly feeling on the back of her neck. Like there's somebody watching her.

She turns quickly, and makes eye contact with a kid, probably elementary school aged, who stares at her for barely a second and then bolts away.

"Hey," Futaba says, hopping off the desk and almost tripping over her own feet from the quick movement. "There's someone else here."

"Seriously?" Ryuji asks.

"Yes, seriously!" Futaba says. "You guys are still working on that map, right? I want to go after him."

"You're just going to go running after a stranger in a place like this?" Ann asks. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"He's just a kid," Futaba says. And he'd looked _so_ freaked out. "It'll be fine. Will you guys be okay there for a little bit?"

"Turns out we're terrible at cartography," Akira says, and even though he's obviously trying to sound upbeat, there's a thread of concern under the words. "It's going to be a while before we have the map done and we're ready to go. We'll still be here when you get back, but just... be careful, Oracle, okay?"

"Thanks," Oracle says, and dismisses her Persona before she goes running after the kid. 

She doesn't get too far away from the labyrinth before her metaverse costume changes back to her real world clothes, which at least makes it easier to see where she's going while she runs. What _doesn't_ help is the fact that she has no idea where she's going or how this school is laid out, and the kid is quieter than she would have expected from someone his age. She'd gotten a glimpse of him charging up the stairs when he first ran away from her, but by the time she's gotten up to the second floor she can't even hear his footsteps anymore.

On a whim, she decides to keep going up instead of checking the second floor. She doesn't really _want_ to go running up more flights of stairs, but the kid had looked like he just wanted to get as far away from her as possible, and running _up_ would do that for him. So up Futaba goes, not even stopping at the third floor, but running (alright, _walking quickly_ by this point) up to the roof. 

(On the third floor, she passes close enough for Haru and Makoto to shoot her a pair of utterly confused looks, but she doesn't stop to explain)

She pauses in the doorway, looking around. There's a view here, wide open in a way she just never sees in Tokyo, broken only by the tall clocktower just inside the school gates. And on the roof itself, standing all the way on the other end and looking not too happy about having been found, is the kid she'd seen downstairs.

"Hey," Futaba calls. The kid looks at her like he's sizing her up, and Futaba gives him the same kind of look back. 

He looks like he's maybe the same age as Nanako, but where she'd been pretty short even for a grade schooler, he has the stretched out look of someone still in the middle of a growth spurt. His dark hair sticks up in all directions and he's panting a little after his mad dash up three flights of stairs. He's poised to run again, light on his feet in case she gives him an opening to get away, but his eyes are open and easy for Futaba to read. 

(And there's _something_ about him that seems weirdly, naggingly familiar, but Futaba can't quite put her finger on it)

He doesn't seem afraid--which makes sense, since Futaba knows that there's basically nothing about her that could scare anyone--even if he _had_ just been running from her. He looks curious and eager, and Futaba figures that if he's as interested in her as he looks like he is, that's probably the best way to get him to hold still and give her some of the answers she's looking for.

"Hi," the kid calls back at her. "Do you know what's going on here?"

Futaba doesn't really want to have this whole conversation shouting at each other across the roof, so she walks closer. The kid watches her but doesn't run, to her relief. "Not yet," she says, trying to look like someone that sort of knows what's going on, and not like an out of shape teenager that had just run up three flights of stairs against her better judgment. "But we're working on figuring it out."

"Who's we?" the kid asks. He relaxes a little, looking less like he's going to dash off any second. "Are there more of you?"

"Yep," Futaba says. Since she has his attention and he hasn't bolted yet, she asks, "Listen, you're not going to run away again, are you?"

"I'm thinking about it," the kid says, giving her a shit eating grin that makes Futaba, for whatever reason, _immediately_ decide that she likes him. There's just--something in the expression that she likes. "Are you going to keep chasing me?"

"Please don't," Futaba says, rolling her eyes. "I hate running."

"Sorry," he says, not looking sorry at all. But he _does_ sit down, right where he's standing on the roof, and Futaba takes this as his agreement to stay still long enough for them to finish this conversation. 

She sits down too, and asks, "So what are you doing here? You don't look old enough to be in high school."

"I'm not," he says. "But the culture festival is today and I came to look around and stuff."

"Is it _actually_?" Futaba asks. "I mean, I know it's all set up like that inside, but since everyone else in here looks like a cognition, I wasn't sure what was going on with the decorations."

"It's actually the culture festival," the kid confirms. "Yeah. What's a cognition?"

...whoops. Probably shouldn't have just blurted that out. "It's, um..." Her hesitance to answer only makes him seem more interested, so Futaba rolls her eyes and decides to just explain. It's not any worse than explaining to Haru and Makoto, right? They're all stuck in here together, and there's no point pretending they're going to be able to keep secrets while they're trying to get home. "Okay," Futaba says. "So there's this thing called the metaverse."

He leans forward slightly, hands on his knees, his interest obviously piqued. 

"It's this kind of other dimension," Futaba continues. "Uh--" She knows that she kind of has a habit of getting overly technical with explaining things, because she always wants to tie everything to her mom's research. But even the other Phantom Thieves look pretty lost when she starts going into that, and they're all older than this kid, so she tries to reign it in a little. 

The explanation she ends up giving him is pretty close to the one she'd heard Akira give Makoto and Haru earlier, about the metaverse and Persona and Shadows and cognitions. She expects a bunch of questions, but he seems to follow what she's saying surprisingly easily. He holds off on asking any questions at all until she's done, and only thenstarts in.

"So you said there's a few of you, right?" he asks. "Is that you and the other two girls downstairs?"

"You saw them?" Futaba asks. He nods, and she says, "Well--no. They came through with us, but they're not Phantom Thieves. That's, uh... the name of our group."

"That's an awesome name," the kid says.

"Oh good," Futaba says, rolling her eyes in a way that makes him laugh. "The ten year old thinks we're cool."

"Hey!" he protests. "I'm _twelve_."

"Same thing," she says, and doesn't know exactly why she's teasing. It just feels surprisingly easy to do with him.

"Maybe when you're in high school," he says. "And _old._ "

"I am not old," Futaba tells him. "I'm fifteen."

He ignores her. "Twelve is a lot older than ten when you're the one that's _actually_ twelve."

Fair, Futaba has to admit.

Luckily, he doesn't seem too genuinely bothered. "So where's everyone else?" he asks. "I've only seen those two, and they're _not_ on your Phantom Thief team, so where's everyone that is?"

She tells him about the labyrinth, and then sees the look in his eyes and hastily switches gears, spending the next five minutes telling him that he should _not_ go in to see it for himself, he doesn't have a Persona and it'd be _dangerous_.

"Sure," the kid says. "I get it, it's dangerous."

"So does that mean you won't go in?" Futaba presses. 

"Maybe." His eyes are bright and he's trying not to smile, clearly enjoying this _way too much._

"Seriously," Futaba says. She has the idea that this is him getting back at her for the ten year old crack earlier, but does _not_ appreciate it. "There are some really dangerous Shadows in there, like more dangerous than anywhere else I've seen." She explains, briefly, about F.O.E.s, exaggerating how tough they are only very slightly, and this at least seems to make him listen a little bit.

"Okay," he says. "I... won't go in there."

...she's about 85% sure that she believes him.

"How about you come back down with me?" she asks. "We can hang out by the entrance and at least you'll know what's going on. Good enough?" And she'll know where he is, and that he's definitely not wandering into the labyrinth to get himself murdered by Shadows.

For a second he looks like he's about to agree, but then something makes him hesitate. "Uh," he says. "First, can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"When I was down there before, you were in a costume, right?"

Oh. Sure, that'd look weird enough to freak out anyone that isn't used to it. "It's something that happens to us while we're in the metaverse," Futaba explains. "Or--because I'm the navigator, I guess that's why mine changed while I was still in the hall downstairs. So right now all my friends are in the labyrinth and _they_ all have costumes on too, but when they come back out, their clothes will be normal again. Like mine went back to normal when I followed you up here."

"So you're definitely the only one that has a costume when you're outside the labyrinth?" the kid asks. "No one else's clothes changed just from getting close?"

"Right," Futaba says. "We tested it a little before they went in, and mine are the only ones that changed, and only when they went in there. Why do you ask?"

"Uh--" He gives an awkward looking shrug. "No reason. I'll come down with you."

"Cool," she says, standing and offering him her hand to stand up too. "And I guess if we're going to be hanging out, we should probably do introductions, right?"

He laughs. "We should _probably_ have done introductions before we spent twenty minutes talking about other dimensions."

"Okay," she admits. "Maybe. But anyway, I'm Futaba."

"Akira," he says.

And Futaba's first, stupid thought, is to think that it's a weird coincidence that she'd meet someone else with that name so close to the metaverse. Her next thought, an embarrassing thirty seconds later when they've already made it halfway across the roof, is--

_I thought he looked familiar, as soon as I saw him I thought he looked familiar, I've actually seen pictures of him as a kid so HOW DID I MISS THIS._

"Hey," Futaba says, and she's surprised her voice manages to sound casual while she's mentally screaming at herself. "Akira?"

"Yeah?"

His voice is different, she thinks, but then again it _would_ be if he's twelve. "This might be a stupid question, but can you tell me what the date is? Because we came from the end of May, and that's not exactly the usual time of year for a school culture festival."

"Oh?" Akira says. "It's, um... October 30th."

"What _year_?" Futaba presses.

"2011," he says, and Futaba does the math in about half a second. That's exactly the right year for when Akira would have been twelve, and what are the odds that she'd stumble onto someone else with the same name, who's the right age, who looks like him, in a metaverse copy of a school _in the town where he'd grown up_. "Why?" he asks. "What year is it for you?"

She doesn't--can't--answer for a second.

"Futaba?"

"Um," she manages at least. "It's... 2016."

"Oh," he says. "Cool." 

They start downstairs without really saying anything else, but when they're halfway there Akira says, "Hey, Futaba. You know what it means if I'm from 2011 and you're from 2016?"

"What?" Futaba says. She looks back at him, and sees the same shit eating grin he'd given her before on his too-young face. 

"It means that technically I'm actually _older_ than you," he says.

Yeah, Futaba thinks. _I know_.

And then they get down to the labyrinth, and Futaba pulls up short as she sees that the hall in front of it isn't empty anymore. While she was upstairs talking to Akira, someone else has shown up.

Great.

-//-

_October 30, 2011_

_Afternoon_

-//-

The culture festival starts out badly, with the disaster that is the group date cafe ( _never again_ , Yosuke), and only gets worse from there. Yu had _not_ been ready, when he walked out of the house this morning, to end up in some kind of alternate version of Yasogami full of fake versions of the other students, with himself and the rest of the Investigation Team the only real people left.

But here they are, and there's nothing to do with it but try and find a way out. 

"This has to be related to the TV World," Chie says, when the whole group has met up. "Right? It's too weird not to be."

"Probably," Naoto says slowly. "But all we know so far is that there's something wrong here, and that there's no obvious way out. I think we need some more data before we can figure out what exactly is going on."

Yu sighs, and does his best to try and puzzle through this. "It would make sense if it was somehow TV World related, though," he points out. "Because it's only Persona-users that are still here."

"Hmm," Naoto says. "You do have a point. I wonder if..."

But she trails off without finishing the sentence, looking thoughtful and conflicted. 

"Why don't we go check out more of the school," Kanji says. "If we don't know enough to figure out what's going on, then it seems like we gotta find out some stuff! Right?"

"I think it's... probably a good idea?" Yu says. Everyone's looking at him suddenly to make the decision of what they're going to do next, as if they were all back in the TV World. "We can't do anything now anyway, so we might as well go look around." He stands up, and kind of gestures toward the stairs. "We'll stick together, start on the first floor, and work our way up. Does that sound okay with everyone?"

"Or," Teddie says. "We could just go look at the cosplay display?"

The rest of the group all look over at him, because--seriously? _Now_?

In the end, though, Yu shrugs, and decides that compromising is probably going to be the least painful way to handle this. "If we're going to look around the whole school anyway," he says. "Why don't we _start_ with the one Teddie wants to go to, and look at the other ones after that."

"Should we really be encouraging him, though?" Yukiko asks as Teddie lets out a cheer.

"Probably not," Yu admits. "But we _do_ have to check the whole school, and at least we know this is one booth he'll be paying attention to." And no one seems to have any argument to make about this, so they head down, Teddie leading the way as they make a beeline straight to the cosplay booth--

Or, more accurately, to where it _should_ have been, because what's there instead is an Alice in Wonderland themed booth that very definitely is not cosplay themed.

"Are you sure this is where it was supposed to be?" Chie asks skeptically.

"Yes!" Teddie says. "I made a special note of it, this is _definitely_ where it was supposed to be."

And now it's something else. The sign over the entrance says _You in Wonderland,_ and Yu looks up at it, thinking. "So I guess we found our suspicious booth," he says. "Should we go in and see what's inside?"

And what's inside--after a disorienting transition that almost throws all of them off their feet--is a labyrinth. And Shadows, and and several fights that the group struggles with more than it feels like they should. After only a few minutes, Yu calls for everyone to stop and rest for a minute. No one's too badly hurt, yet, but he's especially worried about Rise getting hurt while they're in here. It's true that she usually comes into the TV World with them and is perfectly fine, but there's something about this place that makes it feel especially dangerous for her to be here without a Persona that can fight.

"But how am I supposed to help you guys if I'm not even with you?" Rise protests. 

Teddie, of all people, is the one that tries to reassure her. "Don't worry," he says. "This place bearly smells like the real world at all. Even back in the school, I think it's closer to the TV World than the real world."

"So you think she might be able to summon her Persona even outside the labyrinth?" Naoto asks.

"Possibly," Teddie says.

"Interesting," Naoto says. "Yu, do you mind if Teddie and I take Rise back to the entrance? Teddie might be helpful getting her set up, and there's a couple things I want to look into back at the school."

"What kind of things?" Yu asks.

"I'll let you know if anything comes of it," Naoto says. 

"Okay," Yu says, a little confused. But Naoto is smart and observant, and she'll tell the rest of them when she knows enough to be sure. "Sure, sounds good. Stay safe, you guys." 

"You too," Naoto says, before the three of them that are leaving head off on their own. Yu watches them go, trying to fight the urge to shout a them to come back. This is his team, and he needs them _safe_. Sending them back on their own, through a labyrinth that they barely know anything about does not feel safe at all.

It's a tense few minutes, but then they hear Rise's voice in their heads, brightly announcing that she'd been able to call her Persona from outside the labyrinth. "It's a little hard to see the whole thing," she says. "But I think that's just because of how much of a maze that place is. It didn't feel any better from the inside."

"Then you should stay out there for right now," Yu tells her. "If you can navigate just as well without being close to these Shadows, that sounds like a good plan."

"I can do that," Rise says, and now that she's back in contact they're able, for a little while, to concentrate on getting further with their exploration. Progress is slow but steady, until after one particular fight when Rise speaks hesitantly up with some bad news.

"Guys?" she says. "I, um... I think there's another group of Persona-users in there. Really close to all of you."

"What direction?" Yu asks.

"Left around the next corner," Rise says. "And then maybe about... thirty feet ahead."

Yu nods, and looks back at Chie, Yosuke, and Kanji. "Stay back for a second," he says. "I want to see this for myself first." 

"Are you sure?" Chie asks.

"I'm just going to take a look," Yu assures her. He moves forward to the corner Rise had described, only about ten feet away, and takes a careful look around it to see if the other group of Persona-users is visible.

They are. And what Yu sees, thirty feet away, is the Trickster.

With _friends_.

He glances back over his shoulder at the rest of his team. "The Trickster's there," he says, then adds a hasty _"Shh!_ " as everyone starts to speak at once. "I'm--" He can't put anyone else in danger over this. He can't. "I'll go ahead. The rest of you, stay back here."

And then, without waiting for the inevitable arguments, he draws his sword and runs away.

-//-

_October 30, 2011_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Akira is not sure whether Futaba falls into the category of people Lavenza would be mad at him for talking to her about the TV World. On the one hand, he knows that she's not one of Yu's friends, and that seems like the thing Lavenza's always been the most concerned about. But on the other hand, she's still another Persona-user, so maybe it would be bad...? Akira's honestly not sure, which is why he'd kept quiet about Arsene and the TV World while Futaba told him about things she'd obviously expected him not to know anything about.

But whether he's going to say anything to her or not, he at least makes up his mind that he likes her. She's the first other Persona-user that's ever volunteered to explain _anything_ to him (even Lavenza had needed a ton of persuasion before she started to open up) and also she's from the future which seems awesome, and he wants to know more about that. So he goes back down with her to the labyrinth, where--

Where they find Naoto, Teddie, and Rise in the spot where Futaba had been sitting earlier.

"Oh no," Akira says. It's quiet, but apparently not quiet _enough_ , because Futaba hears and looks back at him. He turns quickly away and pretends he hadn't said anything, but the thing is that he can feel Naoto's eyes on him and he has a pretty good feeling that he knows why she's looking for him.

"I thought you'd end up here eventually," she says to Akira. "Who's this?"

"Um," Akira says. He doesn't know if Futaba would want to tell absolutely everyone what she'd told him, so he keeps his explanation simple and just says, "This is Futaba. It looks like she got dragged into... wherever this is, too."

"Yeah," Futaba says, and hops up onto her earlier desk, close to where Rise is standing. Her clothes flash with blue fire and turn back into the costume Akira had seen her in before (which... actually makes it kind of a moot point whether she _wants_ them to know anything about her having a Persona, because that's pretty obviously suspicious). She gives the rest of the group--Naoto and Rise in particular, it seems like--a weird look before adding, "I kind of left my team in the labyrinth, so I need to get back to navigating."

"Wait," Rise says. "You're with that other team in there?"

"Yep," Futaba says. "And like I said, I kind of left them hanging, so..." She waves a hand vaguely, and then starts whispering urgently to... her Phantom Thieves, Akira guesses. There's a definite hint of panic in her tone, but he's not close enough to pick up on the words

"She's a navigator like Rise," Teddie says, eyes wide with surprise.

"Which means that both of them are doing something important," Naoto says. "And the three of us should go somewhere more private to talk so we don't distract them."

Akira shuffles his feet and tries not to look like he's dreading this as much as he actually is. The conversation earlier with Futaba had been fun, but this one he's pretty sure will not be. "Okay," he mumbles, and lets Naoto lead both him and Teddie far enough down the hall that no one will be able to hear them.

"So I assume you know why I wanted to talk to the two of you," Naoto says, when they've reached the far end of the hallway.

"It's about me, right?" Akira asks.

Naoto nods. "We're in the middle of something that isn't the TV World, but is certainly connected to it," she says. "The only people that are here are Persona-users, and the fact that you're here is going to make people start asking questions. I know that you still have time before your deadline, but--" She shakes her head. "Akira, you need to think about coming clean to Yu now, or he's just going to figure it out for himself."

Akira leans back against a wall and just focuses on breathing. Teddie tries to ask questions once or twice, but Naoto--to Akira's relief--shushes him each time, giving him space to think things through.

Eventually, Akira says, "I don't know what I would even say. I've been thinking about it for three weeks, and I can't think of any way to tell him the truth that won't make him want to hate me."

"I honestly don't think he's going to be as angry as _you_ think he will be," Naoto says.

"I can't afford to think that he won't be mad," Akira says. "Because if I'm wrong, and I tell him in a bad way, then--" He sort of wishes he was saying all this to anyone other than Naoto and Teddie. "Then I think I'll hate myself, too."

Naoto's expression, which is normally so collected, suddenly looks sympathetic. He can only stand to look at her for a second or two before he drops his gaze back to the ground to stare at his shoes. "Do you want me to talk to him with you?" she asks.

"I..." Akira runs his hands through his hair. "N-no. I'll talk to him myself. When everyone comes out of there, I'll... figure out what to say." He risks a look back up at her and Teddie again, and kind of laughs nervously. "But, um... if you want to stop him from murdering me after, _that_ would be great."

"There's no way Yu's going to fight you over this," Naoto says. "Even if everything you're afraid of comes true, and Yu really _is_ angry, I don't believe that he would ever take it out on you physically. He's not that kind of person."

No, Akira has to admit to himself. Yu's a good person. He wouldn't actually do that.

(Somehow, it doesn't make him any less worried)

" _Hey_!"

Rise's high voice comes drifting down the hall toward them then, and all three look back in that direction to see that she's now shouting in their direction, hands cupped around her mouth to make her voice louder. "Naoto! Teddie! They're fighting the trickster in there!"

Akira's eyebrows furrow together in complete confusion. "But that's not..." He looks at Naoto, and is not all that reassured to find the same confusion on her face that he feels on his.

"It's _not_ possible," she agrees. "Obviously. Which means that something very wrong is going on over there."

All three of them run back to the labyrinth.

-//-

_May 30, 2016_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Akira knows that something is wrong when Futaba comes back from tracking down whoever she'd seen outside the labyrinth, and informs them breathlessly that she's just seen _him_ , that there are more Persona-users in the labyrinth right now, and that apparently it's 2011.

"Wait," Akira says, trying to pull all these cryptic clues together. "Oracle, what--"

"There's other people around out here," she says, still whispering. "So I can't say much, but--watch out, guys. And maybe get out of there like _now_ , so we can all talk."

Her urgency is what convinces him, but before he can so much as announce that they're turning around, he hears footsteps running toward them and turns. He sees the sword first and pulls his knife on instinct, ready to block the incoming attack. And then half a second later he sees the person holding it.

Futaba's cryptic warnings suddenly click together into something that makes sense. The fact that Margaret is here from 2011 _also_ suddenly makes sense. Frozen from the realization of _oh no I should have figured this out earlier,_ Akira only has time to open his mouth in surprise before Yu is on him with a sword.

They've fought before, once, during the P-1 Tournament. But then there had been trust between them, a kind of agreement that they're going to go all out without actually hurting each other. This is different. This is a young Yu-- _2011_ , Futaba had said--and it's obvious that Yu hasn't recognized him. Or to be more accurate, he's recognized the _Trickster_ , and not _Akira_.

Mentally cursing, Akira parries the sword, ducks away, and then drops his knife and stands there with his empty hands fully in view. "Stop," he says. "I don't want to fight you." 

And Yu--because he is Yu, and Akira knows that deep down he's not the kind of person that's going to hurt an unarmed opponent--stops. His eyes are hard and suspicious, his sword is still held out in front of him, but at least he's not making any move to attack.

"Listen," Akira says. "I know what you think I am, and--" Okay, so he _is_ the Trickster, so Yu's not exactly jumping to the wrong conclusion there. "And I can explain whatever you want to have explained. Okay? Whatever questions you want to ask, I'll answer. But I don't want to fight you."

"Hang on," Morgana says. "Joker, why--"

Akira shakes his head quickly, and looks back at the Phantom Thieves. Ann and Ryuji look easily the most confused, and he doesn't think either of them have recognized Yu. Fair enough--they've only ever seen him hanging around after school, five years older and arguing with Akira about things that don't have anything to do with the metaverse. Morgana looks like he _has_ recognized Yu, and is deeply confused by why they're fighting now. Yusuke, of course, had known Yu in 2011, and also knows what he'd thought of the Trickster. He's apparently put things together and come to the same conclusion as Akira, because he's watching Yu with a small frown on his face.

"Let my team go past," Akira says, turning back to Yu. "And then we can talk."

Yu hesitates. 

"Please," Akira adds. "You're pissed at me, and that's--I mean, it is what it is, but I just want to keep my friends--" He has to force the word out, because the idea of needing to protect people he cares about from Yu (of all people) feels like a stupid one. "Safe."

Slowly, Yu lowers his sword. As hard as it had been for Akira to essentially say _you are a danger to my friends and I need to get them away,_ apparently it had been the right choice. Maybe he should have expected that--he knows how important it is to Yu to be able to protect his friends.

"Okay," Yu says, and he seems to relax a little bit. "Yeah. We can _all_ leave, and talk about this back at school."

"Deal," Akira says, relieved. "Do you mind if I...?" He gestures at the knife he'd dropped earlier to show Yu that he didn't want to fight. The thing is that it had _kind_ of been expensive, and he can just imagine the look on the face of Iwai at Untouchable, if he has to go back in after all this is over and buy another one of the same thing he's already bought once.

"I'll carry it," Yu says, as if Akira needed the reminder that he doesn't trust him.

They start walking, and after a couple of turns meet back up with the Investigation Team. Akira glances over their faces, hoping to see either Teddie or Naoto--he's not sure when exactly this is in 2011, but they'd been friendly before anyone else had decided to give the Trickster a chance--but neither of them is here. 

"This is very strange," Yusuke mutters at Akira's side, and they share a _look_ just between the two of them, at the weirdness of how incredibly young the Inaba group seems.

The rest of the trip back is basically uneventful. Even the Shadows seem to be staying out of their way, as if they can sense the tension in the air and don't dare get in the middle of it. There's not much conversation, even when they get back to the exit, and cross back through that moment of disorientation and into Yasogami.

Where the very first thing he sees is himself, twelve years old and staring up at him.

Part of him goes _oh no_ and another part says _awesome_ , and for the first moment, at least, that second part wins. "What are you doing here?" he asks, just barely managing to hold back a laugh. "I know for a fact that you don't go to this school."

"You--but--" the younger Akira, unlike every other person from 2011 that Akira has seen so far, apparently recognizes him _immediately._ Probably fair, considering they are actually the same person. For a second he just keeps staring, and then he spins around and _shouts_ at Futaba, who is standing nearby and looking only very slightly apologetic. "Is this why you asked me what year it is?" he demands, using his whole arm to point back at Akira.

"Well," she admits. "Yes."

"You could have said something!"

"Like what?" Futaba asks. Everyone, from _both_ teams, is staring at the two of them now. Akira lets his eyes roam across the collection of faces, the Investigation Team and the Phantom Thieves and even Haru and Makoto, who have apparently been drawn downstairs by the noise and drama.

(And wow, _this_ is going to be hard to explain to the two of them later. At least everyone else is kind of used to weird stuff by now) 

In the end, his gaze lands on Naoto, who is staring at him like he's some kind of impossible enigma. Akira shrugs, then gives her a sheepish, vaguely apologetic grin.

(The last time he'd seen her, she'd been in Mementos telling them all about how she's being driven out of Tokyo)

"You could have said _something_ ," the younger Akira insists to Futaba. 

Futaba grins. "So next time I should just go, 'hi, I know we just met, but I know you from five years in the future and also he's downstairs fighting Shadows'?"

"I mean--I don't know, maybe!"

Yu clears his throat at this point, and says, "Uh... is there something about all this that you know and the rest of us don't, Akira?"

The younger Akira doesn't answer this for a long second. Akira watches... well, _himself._ He watches the way he takes a deep breath, pulls himself as tall as he can.

Come on, he catches himself thinking. You can do this. 

And then the younger Akira spins abruptly to face Yu.

"I'm the Trickster," he says, so quickly that the words run together and sound almost incomprehensible. "It's me, it's _always_ been me, and please, _please_ , Yu, don't hate me."

Yu's expression goes frozen and impossible to read. The silence just stretches out as everyone waits for him to answer. 

(Waits, and _waits,_ for an answer that... doesn't seem to be coming any time soon)

Finally, seeming to feel bad for the anxiously waiting younger Akira, Naoto breaks the quiet. "I know I said that you just tell him," she says lightly. "But I didn't exactly mean that you should blurt it out like that with no context."

Someone laughs, and the younger Akira cracks a nervous smile, and that seems to be the cue everyone else is waiting for to explode into an absolute tidal wave of questions. Yusuke goes over to the younger Akira and pats him on the shoulder. 

("Good job," he says.

"Oh, okay," small Akira answers, staring at him. "Um--hi?")

And because the crowd has more or less descended into chaos after all that, Akira thinks that he's the only one that notices Yu taking a step back and actually _leaving_. Akira's not sure whether he's angry or just needs space or what, but...

Well, the first chance that he gets, Akira slips away from the group and follows him. 

He doesn't realize until he's well away from everyone else that his younger self has snuck away as well. Akira stops, waiting for him to catch up, and for a couple seconds they just... look at each other.

Then Akira asks, "Do you want me to come with you when you talk to him?"

"That depends," small Akira says, and even though he's trying, _hard_ , to keep his emotions off his face, Akira can read his nervousness like an open book. "You told Yu, right? When you were... um. Me."

Akira shakes his head. He thinks back to when he and Nanako had been trapped in the TV World, and Naoto had decided that Yu _needed_ to know, deadline or no deadline. "Things kind of... got complicated," he says. "Naoto told him."

"Oh," Akira says. "But--did he hate you after that?"

This question, at least, Akira can answer. He reaches back to his pocket and pulls out his phone. There's still no signal here, unsurprisingly, but Akira pulls up his photo app and scrolls through until he finds the one he's looking for. It's from last summer, during a weekend when Yu had come down to visit--a crowded selfie, himself and Yu and Nanako. Yu and Nanako are laughing, and Akira with a smear of purple down one side of his face from an Incident-with-a-capital-I involving a popsicle.

Maybe a weird picture to choose to show off, but Akira's pretty sure he knows what his younger self needs to see. The younger Akira looks at it, at the promise of a distant future where Yu not only doesn't hate him but still _likes_ him, for a very long time. Then he takes a deep breath, nods, and hands the picture back. "Thanks," he says. "You can come with, if you want to."

And Akira absolutely does, so both of them go to find Yu.

-//-

(And Yu, alone in a classroom that _hasn't_ been turned into a labyrinth, sits with his head buried in his hands and thinks-- _Akira is the trickster_ )

( _He's the trickster, and there's two of him here, and at least one of them thinks I'm going to hate him)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of premptive answers to questions I am expecting to see:
> 
> 1) Yes, Lavenza will be showing up! From what I remember of PQ, Margaret shows up first and then Elizabeth and Theodore later. So Margaret shows up first here, and Lavenza (maybe the other two...?) will come later
> 
> 2) Zen and Rei will also be showing up soon, but because of the way I want to introduce them, everyone else needs to meet first
> 
> 3) No, this is NOT going to be entirely angst and drama, but I could not help some self-indulgent milking of the whole Yu-doesn't-know-Akira-is-the-Trickster issue. Let me have this, guys. It's fun for me :p Later chapters, we'll get more Makoto and Haru, more P5 cast deciding Smolkira is adorable, etc, etc.


	20. Persona Q - Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note before we get into things: there's nothing in PQ itself, as far as I can remember, that gives us a hint about how long it takes. I absolutely refuse to believe it took place all in one day though, because  
> a) There are so many little conversation scenes where they're just hanging out and eating. No one can eat that much in one day without gaining about fifty pounds  
> b) We know that fighting Shadows absolutely wipes you out afterward (just look at Morgana and his incessant go-to- bed nagging) so I'm assuming they were sleeping at some point between five labyrinths  
> c) It took me five years to beat this game, I refuse to believe anyone could get through everything in one day :p And I checked on howlongtobeat.com, which shows an average playtime of 79.5 hours, which means that this whole adventure should be measured in days
> 
> TLDR, I spent a good chunk of this week significantly overthinking how long they'd be here, figuring out how they would sleep/shower/etc, and that is how the middle chunk of this chapter happened.

_Day 1_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Yu isn't exactly trying to hide, so he's not too surprised when Akira (both of them) are able to track him down after not too long at all. But at least he's had a little bit of time to get his thoughts pulled together before he looks up and sees that Akira--the one he can't help thinking of as the real one, the twelve year old and not the teenager--is standing in the door of the classroom where he's come to think things through.

The other one's there too, standing just behind him and looking impossible to read. There's something about the way he holds himself, not just his expression but his whole posture, everything from the set of his shoulders to the way he turns his head, that makes it look like he's trying hard not to give anything away. Yu has no idea how he's feeling about any of this--from what little he can see, it's just impossible to guess.

And then the older one says, "Go on," and puts his hand on the other one's shoulder to give him a little push.

"I'm not going to bite," Yu says, and does his best to put on a face and hide his uncertainty. "I guess... we all probably need to talk, don't we?"

"Are you mad?" younger Akira asks tentatively, as he sits down next to Yu. The older one sits a couple desks away, keeping quiet but still watching.

"I'm--" He doesn't think that he is. He's confused, and worried, and suddenly a little bit wary, but he doesn't think that he's actually mad. "No," he says. "But I'd really like an explanation from..." He looks between the two of them. "From one of you."

Younger Akira squirms like the last thing he wants to do is sit here and explain himself, but the older one nods. "Do you mind if I do it?" he asks. "There are some things I know now that I didn't know five years ago that are probably going to help things a little bit clearer."

Yu nods, but takes a second to think about how he's going to ask his questions before he says anything. He's just... he's not sure how to talk to this version of Akira. Even leaving aside the strangeness of the person he's grown into, Yu has gotten so used to filling a kind of older brother role that he isn't sure how to interact with him while they're at the same age. Carefully, he asks, "So what exactly does Trickster mean?"

"As far as I've ever had it explained to me," Akira says. "It has something to do with the way the residents of the Velvet Room look at us. At Wild Cards, I mean."

Yu should be past being able to feel surprised at this point, but somehow this still throws him. "You know about that?" he asks.

Akira nods (the younger one looks confused). "I don't actually know if Trickster is an actual--you know, a _thing_ , like a Wild Card is, or if they just really think I'm that much trouble." His expression flickers, and he grins for a second. "Probably that one, actually. But it's just a word that the Velvet Room attendants use."

"Lavenza does too," the younger Akira pipes up.

His friend, Yu remembers, the one he's never actually met.

"Right," the older Akira says. "She's one of the Velvet Room attendants."

"You just casually have a friend from the Velvet Room," Yu says, unable to keep himself from raising his eyes up toward the ceiling. 

"What does that mean?" younger Akira asks. "What's the Velvet Room?"

His older self explains before Yu has a chance. "It's a place where people that know a lot about the metaverse--about the TV World, or places like this, I mean--spend time. I think the Velvet Room itself is kind of part of the metaverse too." He hesitates, then as an aside to Yu, asks, "You saw the entrance up on the second floor, right? You've talked to Margaret since you got here?"

"No," Yu says. "I didn't see there was a door there."

"It's inside a fortune telling booth," Akira says. "And Margaret and Marie are both in there--I talked to them a little earlier."

"Who's Margaret?" the younger one asks.

"She's an attendant of the Velvet Room," Akira says. Yu wonders how he knows anything about Margaret at all, and what he's been getting up to in the last five years. "Which means it's her job to help her guest with some metaverse stuff." The younger Akira still looks slightly confused, so his older self smiles, and says, "Yu is her guest. Like we're guests for Lavenza."

"But they're not friends?" Younger Akira looks at his older self, then seems to remember that Yu is in the room too, and looks over at him. "You and Margaret aren't friends?" he asks. "Is that why you said it was bad for me to be friends with Lavenza?" He looks hurt as he says it, but his tone manages to sound accusatory at the same time. 

"There's nothing wrong with it," Yu assures him quickly. "It's just a little... I don't know. Surprising."

"I'm not gonna stop being friends with her," younger Akira mutters. The older one's expression is--difficult to read again, suddenly.

"Okay," Yu says, backing off. This is obviously important to him, and Yu doesn't think that getting in the middle of that relationship is necessarily a good idea. And anyway, he remembers the way Akira had argued with Lavenza, the way he'd come home and curled up and cried when he thought their friendship was over. 

(It had made sense, when he thought she was a friend of Akira's from school or from town. He doesn't know how to reconcile the way Akira feels about her with the fact that she belongs to the Velvet Room. Like Margaret, or like Igor--someone like that is who he's chosen to have as a friend)

"You have more questions," older Akira says, obviously trying to change the subject.

"Right," Yu says, suddenly trying to think of a good one to ask. Luckily (if that's the right word to use in this situation), he's spent a lot of time recently thinking about the Trickster. "I've seen you talking to Shadows," he says. 

"Yes."

"And--" Yu fumbles for the right words. "Well, that's suspicious, right?"

"It's not," Akira tells him. "You get new Persona from cards, right?" He waits for Yu to nod, then gestures between the two versions of himself. "We have to talk to them to recruit them. It's just a different way of doing the same thing. Like how me and my friends use masks to summon Persona."

"I didn't even realize there were different ways to do that," Yu admits.

Akira nods. "I think you can't really see how..." He struggles for the right word, waving a hand vaguely. "How _big_ it all is until you start to see other people that can summon Persona, or other Shadows to fight, or even other people from the Velvet Room. But it's..." He shrugs, obviously a little self-conscious. "I don't know. I guess that what I'm trying to say is that in the big picture, talking to Shadows really isn't that big of a deal."

And sure, maybe those conversations with Shadows don't seem like that big of a deal to him, if he's the one doing the talking. But Yu isn't sure. Just for a second he isn't sure, because he remembers how it had _looked_ , that day he saw the Trickster talking to a Shadow inside the TV World, how bad it had seemed to know that there was a human that could and would talk to exactly what they've been fighting.

But maybe there's a point to all this being bigger than Yu thinks it is. Because here they all are, and here the labyrinth is, and apparently the Velvet Room is upstairs inside a fortune telling booth. And maybe all this _is_ bigger than the Investigation Team and the TV World.

"Okay," Yu says. "I think that makes sense."

And maybe it's his imagination, but he thinks he sees a flash of _relief_ on the teenage Akira's face before he manages to wipe it away. "So I know that there's probably going to be more questions later," Akira says, voice sounding lighter. "But for now, can we all at least agree that no one here is evil, and that we all need to work together to get back to the real world?"

Yu looks at him, at the still-unfamiliar teenager Akira has grown up into. Then he looks over at the twelve year old version of him sitting barely six feet away, looking hopeful and expectant. And he just...

He doesn't see anything, in _either_ version of Akira, that is like the Trickster he's been so afraid of all this time.

"I will _definitely_ have more questions later," Yu agrees. He looks mostly at the smaller Akira as he adds, "But first I feel like I owe both of you an apology."

"It's okay," the younger Akira says immediately. He looks so much brighter than he had when he walked into this room that it makes Yu smile a little too. "And it's like, um--it's like he said. We can all work together now, right?"

Some part of Yu instinctively wants to keep shielding Akira from whatever they're going to run into in the labyrinths, but he reigns this in. Akira is a kid--well, one of the Akiras is--but he had a Persona and has apparently been fighting Shadows for months already. "Right," he says. "We'll all work together."

And the kid looks absolutely over the moon.

-//-

_Day 1_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Akira follows after Yu and his older self as they head back to rejoin the rest of the group. He feels--he feels _so much better_ now that they've had that conversation. And sure, everything else is weird and crazy and he doesn't know how to deal with the fact that there's another version of _him_ here, but Yu doesn't hate him so he can deal with everything else. 

...although he can't help feeling a little bit nervous, when they actually get back to where everyone is waiting. He's definitely the youngest person here, and in a crowd of more than a dozen high schoolers (plus Teddie and the cat), that just makes Akira feel weird and out of place. Right now no one's really looking at him, mostly because everyone's so busy talking to each other, but as soon as all the different conversations start to die down, and people actually notice they're back, Akira has a feeling they're going to be staring at him.

He doesn't know what to do with the fact that everyone here knows him, but he still only knows about half of them. There's this whole group of strangers here that are going to be his friends someday. And what if they don't like him? He already kind of has the impression that a couple of the girls are mad at older him, so what are they going to think about regular twelve year old him?

For a second he wants to shrink back and hide behind Yu. But then he looks up at his older self, who seems collected, who seems like he has it all figured out, and... somehow that just helps. Somewhere in the five years between this moment of his life and that one, he's going to be able to figure this out.

Akira squeezes his hands into fists, then opens them again. He takes a deep breath and tries to stand up straight. He can handle a few people staring at him, right?

"I think we're probably going to need to talk to everyone," Yu says, looking back at both of them. If he can see that Akira's nervous, he doesn't say anything. "And we should figure out what our next steps are."

"Probably," older Akira agrees, and as the two of them start the not super fun looking job of trying to quiet everyone down, Akira decides to slip away into the back of the crowd.

...maybe he doesn't want to be standing right up in front with them. _So what_ , that doesn't mean he's' scared, it just means he'd rather be at the back.

He finds Futaba and Yusuke there, Futaba sitting on a desk and Yusuke standing next to her leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. They're talking about... something. Akira hesitates, not sure whether to say anything, but when Futaba spots him she gestures him over to join them. "Akira!" she says. "Come over here and tell Yusuke he's wrong."

" _Excuse_ me," Yusuke protests, and Akira--just for a second--can't stop himself from staring. It's one thing to see himself in the future, because even five years later he feels like he knows himself and what kind of person he is. Maybe he's going to change. _Hopefully_ he's going to change, because who would really want to just go on being the same forever? But at least he knows, deep down, _who he is_ , and he thinks there are probably some important things that will stick. But Yusuke is a whole other person, and as well as Akira has gotten to know him in the past couple months, it's still hard to imagine what he's going to be like in another five years.

But they're friends, right? In 2011 _and_ , it looks like, in 2016. So Akira decides to try and make it as not weird as he possibly can.

"What's Yusuke wrong about?" he asks Futaba, traipsing over to join them.

"Nothing," Yusuke protests.

"We're talking about the--what are they called? Investigation Team," Futaba says.

"Yu's friends," Akira says. "What about them?"

"So," Futaba says, leaning forward. "I've met Yu, Rise, and Naoto already, but I don't know that much about the rest of them."

"Which is why I was trying to explain," Yusuke says, in a deeply offended tone.

"Was he doing it wrong?" Akira asks. He settles in, hoisting himself up onto one of the desks so he's sitting on top of it like Futaba is on hers. He does it a little bit less than gracefully, but no one seems to notice.

"Well," Futaba allows. "He's not exactly doing it _wrong,_ but he's just saying it... you know. In a really Yusuke way."

"Oh," Akira says. "Yeah." There are some things that Yusuke is very good at, and some things he does that as far as Akira is concerned... nobody else _can_ do. But he looks at the world in a weird way that doesn't always translate well into words that other people can understand.

"Why am I being ganged up on?" Yusuke asks, and Akira can't stop himself from cracking a smile. 

"So," Futaba says to Akira. " _You_ tell me about them."

Akira knows plenty about Yu's friends, even if he hasn't spent much time with all of them. Yu spends a lot of time talking about them and to them, and since Akira spends a lot of time listening. He starts to tell Futaba everything he can, but is interrupted before he can get too far, they're interrupted.

From the front of the crowd that the three of them are currently sitting at the back of, the older Akira calls, "Hey, peanut gallery!" and Akira realizes that they're the only ones still talking. Everyone else has (finally) gone quiet. 

"Sorry!" Futaba calls. 

"For talking while they're trying to explain things?" Yusuke asks in an undertone. "Or for your brutal mockery of me?"

"I don't think she's actually sorry for either of them," Akira whispers.

Futaba smiles and puts her finger over her mouth to shush them.

"Okay," Yu says. "So I'm sure you guys have all been talking the last few minutes, but just to kind of cover the basics and make sure everyone's on the same page--there's two groups of Persona-users here. The Investigation Team from Inaba in 2011, and..."

He hesitates, so the older Akira steps in to finish the sentence. "Phantom Thieves from 2016. We also have a couple people that, uh, accidentally got dragged with us."

"That's Makoto and Haru," Futaba whispers to Akira, pointing at where the two of them are sitting together.

"Which one's which?" Akira whispers back.

"Makoto's the one that looks mad."

Akira twists around to look at them, trying to figure out which one looks mad. The thing is that to him, neither of them really does. One of the girls seems very calm and composed, and the other one just seems--worried. Maybe a little bit scared and trying to pretend she's not. 

Then she glances over, notices Akira looking at her, and immediately hides the worry. He grins and does his best to look innocent, or at least friendly. Then Futaba digs her finger into his side, so he turns back around and pretends that he'd been paying attention the whole time.

Yu's in the middle of explaining how they're going to all work together to get through the labyrinth and hopefully find something that will show them a way out a the end.

"Obviously there's way too many people here for all of us to try fighting at once," he says. "We'd be tripping over each other if we tried. So I'm thinking we can do groups of..." He shrugs. "Maybe five? I think we'd be able to fit that many people."

"Which team gets to go in first?" Ryuji asks.

"I think it would probably make more sense not to split up based on teams," older Akira says. "We have a lot of people that are good at a lot of different things, so since we have everyone here, there's no reason _not_ to combine teams." He shrugs. "Plus, the Shadows we've seen so far in the labyrinth look a lot more like the ones in Inaba than the ones in Tokyo. Since most of us aren't used to that kind of Shadow, it's better to make sure that every time we go out, there's _someone_ that's used to fighting this kind."

"What about navigating?" Rise asks. "Who's going to handle that?"

"We can switch off," Futaba says. "Maybe one of us handles the team doing the fighting and the other one watches the labyrinth?"

"Ooh!" Rise lights up. "Yes, that would be perfect! It means neither of us would be trying to keep track of too much at once, right?"

"Yeah," Futaba says. "Exactly, so then we know we're not missing anything because we're specializing."

"O...kay, then," Yu says. "It sounds like you two have that part figured out."

"Just leave it to us," Futaba says. "None of you knows anything about navigating anyway."

"Yeah," Rise agrees, laughing. "You just wouldn't get it."

"Right," Yu says. "Okay, then. We're going to spend a couple minutes figuring out who's going to be fighting first, and then we'll go in."

All of them seem to understand that this is the sign that the meeting is about to break up, so they split back up into little groups and start talking again, the conversation level rising right back up.

"So what do you guys want to do while we wait?" Futaba asks. 

"Food," Yusuke says immediately.

"There's all kinds of booths set up for the culture festival," Akira says, sliding off his desk. "I don't see any reason why they wouldn't have actual food we can actually eat, right?"

"Let's go find out," Futaba agrees.

But they don't make it all the way to where Akira remembers seeing the food booths before he catches sight of someone familiar, standing near a fortune telling booth. He brightens immediately and runs toward her, calling back over his shoulder at Yusuke and Futaba that he'll be right back.

-//-

(Futaba watches him dart off with a sudden, heavy feeling of pity gathering in her stomach. "Yusuke," she says conversationally. "I've only seen pictures, but is that--"

"Lavenza," he agrees. "Yes.")

-//-

Lavenza gives him a long suffering look when he gets to her, and he blurts out, "Okay, but I didn't even _do_ anything this time," before she can even ask a question.

Her expression cracks a little, and he decides that the smile she's trying to hide is probably a good sign. "Considering that _I_ don't even know where we are or how we got here, I don't think that this is something you asked for."

"I didn't," he says. "But Lavenza, you _have_ to hear what's been happening--"

He catches her up in a quick rush, almost tripping over his own words as he hurries through it all. She nods along with the story, taking everything in without comment. When he's finished, she says, "So Yu knows everything that you've done now."

"I told him I'm the Trickster," Akira says. "I didn't really have a choice, but I'm glad I did." He hesitates. "I know that you probably think that's a bad idea, but..."

She shakes her head. "I've been thinking about a lot of things, Trickster. Since everything that happened with your classmate. I'm not... I'm not completely convinced anymore that keeping things secret from Yu is the best thing to do."

Rescuing Daiki, Akira has to agree, had been a kind of turning point. Before that, they'd fought about whether he should be in the TV World at all, and for a little while he thought that he'd never go back, and (worse) that their friendship was over. When Daiki was taken into the TV World, though, Akira had been able to convince her that they were the only ones that could or _should_ do anything. She hasn't tried to convince him to stay out of the TV World since then, and has even been a sympathetic ear while he tried to figure out what to do with Naoto's ultimatum.

And ever since then, she's been a lot less dire in her warnings about what would happen if Yu finds out about Akira. Most of Akira's reluctance to say anything since then has been entirely his own fear that Yu would hate him.

"And anyway," Lavenza says. "I assume anything that happens here won't matter after this is over."

"What do you mean?" Akira asks. "Why won't it matter?"

"There are two of you here, Trickster," Lavenza says, not without some sympathy. "And from what I've heard, the older one doesn't remember any of this."

"Wait," Akira says. "So you mean that... we're all going to forget that any of this has happened after it's over?" His heart plummets. "I'm going to have to figure out how to tell Yu all over again?"

She nods, and Akira groans.

"That," he says. "Is _not_ fair."

Her smile is strangely distant. "We're all learning things from being here that don't seem fair," she says. "But that doesn't make them less true." She gives him the very serious look that Akira has learned to listen to. "My sister and I were called here through the Velvet Room. Neither of us knows why yet, but nothing within that room happens without a reason."

(Akira is seriously going to have to see this Velvet Room for himself at some point)

"I choose to believe that the same is true for all of us here," Lavenza continues. "We may not remember any of this after we leave, but we are here now. What happens in this moment matters, even if it's gone tomorrow."

Akira isn't sure that's true at _all_ , not when he's just found out that he's going to have to tell Yu all over again that he is the Trickster, and that he won't even remember doing it the first time. But Lavenza seems certain, and she usually knows what's going on, so Akira nods. "I don't really get it yet," he admits. "But I'll think about it. Lavenza?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think I could cheat and figure out a way to remember after we leave?"

"It doesn't look like you can," Lavenza points out. "Since the older you didn't."

"Can I try anyway?"

"I think that might be beyond even how much trouble _you_ can get into," Lavenza says with a flicker of a smile. "But I'm sure you're going to try no matter what I say." Then, looking up past Akira's shoulder, she says, "Hello, Fox."

"Hello, Butterfly," Yusuke says, and Akira realizes that he and Futaba have caught up. "It's been a while."

"You have gotten much taller," she informs him. 

"Thank you."

"Oh," Akira says, suddenly remembering that Futaba is there too. "Lavenza, this is Futaba."

"Hi," Futaba says to Lavenza. "I have questions about the nature of time travel."

Akira and Yusuke both stare at her.

"What?" she asks. "I can't be the only one wondering if this is a closed loop situation where no one's going to remember because our Akira doesn't, _or_ if this is a branching universe situation we're either going to change the past or create a second reality."

"I'm pretty sure you _are_ the only one wondering that," Akira says. 

"Agreed," Yusuke adds.

"Well I shouldn't be," Futaba says. "It's a relevant question."

"Unfortunately," Lavenza says. "We can be fairly sure that this _is_... what did you call it?"

"A closed loop," Futaba says, pulling a face. "Yeah, I was kind of thinking you'd say that."

"It was a good question," Yusuke says. "I assume. I... don't think I really understood it."

"It's _simple_ ," Futaba says. "If it's a closed loop, then we can assume that everything that happens here is already fixed, because it's already happened to _our_ Akira. But if this had created an alternate timeline, than anything could still happen."

"I am _so_ lost," Yusuke says.

Akira, grinning at their argument, looks over at Lavenza. 

She's not looking back at him. Instead, now that she thinks she's unobserved, she seems worried and a little paler than usual. Her eyes look distant and worried. Akira takes half a step closer and lowers his voice before asking, "Are you okay?"

"For the moment," Lavenza says. "Yes. I just... learned something about my own future today that I don't fully understand yet."

"But it's bad?" Akira asks.

"I think it might be very bad," she admits. "Yes."

"Can I help?"

She actually starts to shake her head before suddenly stopping. "Trickster," she says. "I don't see how you possibly can. But if anyone can find a way, when the time comes, I think it'll be you."

He's pretty sure that's a compliment. It _feels_ like a compliment, anyway, so he says, "Thanks. And when... whenever it is, when it happens, I promise I'll do whatever I can to help."

"Thank you," she says.

"You've helped me lots," he answers. "You always have, even when you were trying not to. At the beginning, remember? When you kept trying to make me go away from the TV World?"

"I remember," Lavenza says, with a thin smile. 

"I'll do anything I can," he tells her. "I promise."

Neither of them says anything for a long time. They just watch each other, and Akira feels like he doesn't actually have to say anything else. He thinks that he can see in her expression that she understands him, and she believes him.

Someone puts a hand on Akira's shoulder, and he jumps a little until he looks up and sees that it's Yusuke.

"We should probably keep looking for the food," he tells Akira. "Or else Futaba will keep trying to explain how time travel works, and I don't' think I can take much more."

"Y-yeah," Akira agrees with a weak smile. "Lavenza, do you want to come with us?"

"Not right now," she says. "But thank you."

"Sure," Akira says, and starts to turn reluctantly away. Before they've gone very far, though, Lavenza calls his name. 

Lavenza is speaking to all three of them, but _looking_ at Akira, when she says, "If you see the other you that's here," she says. "Don't tell him I'm here yet. I want to find the right moment."

"Sure," Akira says. "No problem, I think?"

"Just don't take too long," Futaba says. "Because I know he'll want to see you."

Lavenza's eyes drift down toward the ground, making her look uncharacteristically uncertain when she nods.

-//-

_Day 1_

_Evening_

-//-

In the end, Akira goes with Yu, Yusuke, Morgana, and Yukiko for the first official trip into the labyrinth after combining the groups. Rise and Futaba--who had disappeared for a while with Yusuke and the younger Akira, before coming back with food--are navigating. There's some discussion about whether everyone else should come too and just stay out of the way, or if it should just be the five of them. 

"Let's just do us five for now," Akira says, as the seven of them stand near the entrance to the labyrinth. "It's getting late, everyone's kind of tired--we'll do just this group for now. Tomorrow we can try bringing more people in and see if it works."

"It _is_ getting late," Yukiko says, with some surprise. "Isn't it? It's hard to tell here."

"Time's always weird in the metaverse," Akira says. "But it definitely feels like we've been here for a few hours already."

"We're going to have to sleep here, aren't we?" Futaba asks.

"At least one night," Akira says. "Maybe more, depending how many floors this labyrinth is."

"You think it'll be more than one _floor_?" Morgana asks.

Akira hesitates, opening his mouth and then closing it again before saying. "I--no. That doesn't make sense, does it?" It had just come up as an assumption, that of course there would be more than one floor to the labyrinth. He must be more tired than he's thinking, because where would a second floor even fit? "Sorry, I really don't know why I said that."

"But if it's large enough," Yu says. "We might still need to take a few days."

"That'll be fun," Akira says, making a face. "Should we get started?"

"Yes," Yu says. "Let's go."

So into the labyrinth they go, and even with the weird circumstances, it's _kind_ of great. Akira has always liked fighting with Yu, and this is the closest to being at the same strength as he's ever been. Normally when he's with him, Akira always feels a little bit like he's just tagging along with the older kids. Even now that he's sixteen, he _still_ feels like that a little bit when he meets up with Yu in Mementos.

But here? He's the same age as everyone else--even older, actually, than Naoto, Rise, and Kanji--and when they run into Shadows, his Persona can keep up with everyone else's. And there's something kind of wild about that.

(Is there a part of him that wants to show off a little bit to Yu? To prove that he knows what he's doing, that he can fight just as well as everyone else?)

(...well, yes)

They fight Shadows and run from F.O.E.s. Akira adds details to his map. Between Shadows, they trade stories about what the TV World and Palaces are like. Yukiko, who looks like she's been trying to be polite and not badger Morgana with questions, eventually breaks, and they spend fifteen solid minutes talking about why he looks like a cat in between more fights, and a few wrong turns.

They find a set of stairs, and go down to a second floor of the labyrinth.

Rise gives them an update on what's going on back at the school, reporting that Yosuke and Chie have tracked down the camping supplies used on school trips and set them up in the gym. Futaba adds that small Akira hadn't even made it to the sleeping bags, and instead fallen asleep leaning against a wall by the labyrinth entrance.

"I keep telling you to go to bed earlier," Morgana tells Akira, who is already trying hard not to let his face turn red.

"That's not even me," Akira protests. "I mean--it _was_ , but--"

Futaba's snickering in his ear is no less distracting just because Akira can't see her.

"Well I think it's cute," Rise says. "He has his mouth open and everyth--Futaba, if you keep laughing that loudly, you _are_ going to wake him up."

"Why do I have all the worst friends?" Akira asks the universe in general as he buries his face in his hands.

"Because being the worst friends is what makes us the best friends," Yusuke informs him.

Yu turns away and coughs like he's trying hard not to laugh.

"Okay," Akira says, after a beat. "Sure, Fox. I'll try to keep that in mind."

"I'm going to draw a mustache on him while he's sleeping," Futaba announces.

"Then I'm going to tell Sojiro you broke that jar of good coffee beans last week," Akira shoots back immediately.

"I didn't know it was sitting out on the counter!"

"You still broke it," Akira says. "I've been holding onto that one, Oracle, you _know_ he'll be upset."

" _Why have you been holding onto it_?"

"Because something like this might happen!"

"I don't want to interrupt," Yusuke says. "But--"

"Please," Morgana tells him. "Interrupt."

"But is that a person over there?"

All four of them turn to look where he's pointing--it's hard to see for sure, Akira thinks, but Yusuke is observant when he wants to be, and if he says there's a person up there, Akira believes him. "Oracle?" he says. "Rise?"

There's a brief pause while both of them check the area, and Futaba gets it first. "There's two people, actually," she says. "They don't feel like Persona-users."

"Let's get closer, but stay careful," Yu says.

They start out moving slowly and carefully, but by the time they get halfway to the other two--and Akira can see them now, a boy wearing a spiked collar and a girl with flowers in her long blonde hair, both in Yasogami uniforms--Futaba lets them know that there are Shadows nearby.

"Just on your left," she says. "Not an F.O.E., but pretty strong."

"We should try and ambush it now," Akira says. "Distract it from those two if we can."

"Definitely," Yu says.

"There's the Shadow," Yukiko says, pointing. 

"Get ready to fight," Yu says, and everyone draws weapons.

The fight doesn't go well.

It goes _terribly_ , in fact, because the Shadows are stronger than the ones they've run into so far, and it turns out that they're not weak to anything that the group can hit them with. Akira grits his teeth, _really_ wishes he had more than one Persona, and does his best to just keep fighting. Still, everyone's lagging a little, and both Yusuke and Yukiko are incredibly close to passing out, when something flies past Akira's ear and buries itself in the closest Shadow. 

He spins around, and sees that one of the two they'd spotted earlier, the boy, has come running up and fired a crossbow bolt at the Shadow.

"Woah," Futaba says. "So, uh--I don't know how he managed it, but that actually did some good damage!"

"Let's press the advantage," Yu says. He glances back at the two newcomers too, looking uncertain, but then clearly decides that the Shadows are the biggest threat for now.

The rest of the fight, though, goes a little bit easier thanks to the addition of sporadic crossbow bolts, and eventually the last of the Shadows goes down.

"Thanks for that," Yu says, turning around to look at the newcomers.

The boy hesitates, then nods without saying a word. The girl is still standing behind him, visibly nervous, and...

Familiar.

Akira's sure that he's never seen them before, but _he has definitely seen them before_. He stares, realizing he must look incredibly rude but not able to tear his eyes away. And as he does, a pair of names come bubbling out of depths of memories he didn't know he had.

"You're Zen," he says, and the boy's eyes shoot straight to his face. Akira... has no idea where he's going with this or how he's going to explain knowing this later, but he's started and so he might as well keep going. "Zen and Rei," he says slowly, trying not to dwell too much on the deep and sudden sadness he feels when his eyes drift over to her.

"That's right," Zen says. Everyone is looking at him now, instead of at the other two. "Who are you?"

But Akira doesn't answer. There's a sudden, sharp spike of pain in his head, and he takes a step back, cutting off a hiss and a curse. With sudden and perfect clarity, he _remembers_ \--

_He remembers being smaller, tired and hurt, down on one knee and breathing hard as someone taller puts their hands on his shoulders. He remembers fear and surprise and sadness. It's dark, wherever he is. Not pitch black, but dim and growing dimmer, like night setting in, and there's a tension like a steel band around his chest. He's shaking slightly, and can't make himself stop._

_"Zen," someone says nearby, and it takes Akira a second to recognize his own voice coming from someone else. In the memory it sounds older, but with the benefit of hindsight it sounds normal--his voice now. "Zen, whatever just happened, you have to tell us--"_

_"Rei is dead," says a second voice. Zen's. "She's already dead."_

_Akira sucks in a breath and whimpers slightly. Whoever has their hands on his shoulders squeezes a little, and Akira turns to look at them. His eyes wet very slightly with new tears, he sees Yukiko. Her expression is sad as well, although she's obviously trying to hide it. Even in the memory, Akira isn't fooled._

_"Let's get back upstairs," says someone else, and Akira knows Yu immediately. "We can talk where it's safer."_

_"Diarama," Yukiko says quietly, and Akira feels less tired, less hurt, but no less sad--_

"Joker," Yusuke whispers, and Akira snaps out of--whatever that had just been. "What's wrong?"

"I think," Akira says slowly. "That I just remembered something from--doing all this the first time."

Yusuke--the only one not in the middle of talking to Zen and Rei to try and convince them to come back with them--gives Akira a sharp, questioning look. Akira only shrugs, wincing a little as the gesture makes the lingering pain in his head spike sharply. 

"Joker," Yusuke says again, and Akira sighs. Apparently Yusuke is not willing to let this go without asking at least a few of his questions.

Akira spares a second to glance over at the other conversation happening nearby, just to make sure that no one's going to listen in, but luckily it seems like they're fully absorbed in talking to Zen and Rei. Apparently the two newcomers have been stuck here for a long time already, avoiding the labyrinths as much as they can, but with no other ideas how to get out. Apart from their names, both of them claim that they don't remember anything at all.

Yusuke glances at them as well, then lowers his voice further as he asks Akira, "You mean you remember something from doing this when you were twelve?"

"Right," Akira says. "It was just a little, but--it must have been from then. There were two of me. And Zen was there, and..."

"And?"

Akira shakes his head. "I remembered that at some point, Rei is going to die."

-//-

_Day 1_

_Night_

-//-

Yu decides to take everyone back with a Goho-M as soon as they convince Zen and Rei to come back to the school. They have two more people now to help them fight, which is... honestly kind of weird, since instead of a Persona Zen only has a crossbow and Rei seems to be able to heal without any help at all, but--

Help is help. He'll take it. And he's feeling pretty good about that, right up until the point where Akira pulls him aside and very quickly explains what had happened to him--what he'd _remembered--_ inside the labyrinth.

"Are you sure?" Yu asks.

"Positive."

"And it was definitely a memory?" Yu asks. "Not--I don't know. Just being too tired? Something like that?"

"I'm 100% sure," Akira says, and he's so dead serious that Yu can't doubt him. "It was somewhere here. I could see Zen but I couldn't see Rei, and he was saying that she'd died."

"Did he say how?" Yu says.

Akira shakes his head. "But I'm not sure if it's such a good idea to have them fighting Shadows." He presses a fist up to his chest, and says, "It wasn't just... what I saw and heard. I felt--I know what it feels like when you find out someone you know has died. That's what I felt in that memory." He lifts a hand and runs it through his hair, a deep frown stamped onto his face. "I don't know if we want to talk to them about it, or...?"

Yu doesn't want to have that conversation. He just--doesn't. "Let's do it in the morning," he says. "Before we take _anyone_ back into the labyrinth."

"Okay," Akira says. "Yeah. That sounds like--yeah. And I'm going up to the Velvet Room in the morning, too. Margaret might have some idea why I suddenly remembered that."

"I'll come with you," Yu says. "I still haven't made it up there, and I probably should have already."

"Thanks," Akira says. 

Yu nods, and then gestures back toward the hall behind them. It's mostly emptied out, with everyone going to find a place to camp out for the night, and only the younger Akira is left, still asleep against a wall. "I should probably get him to something closer to an actual bed."

"Sorry about that," Akira says. "Do you want me to...?"

"It's fine," Yu says. "I honestly don't mind."

"Thanks, then," Akira says. "I want to go check in on a few people, but I'll see you in the morning."

There's a moment of silence between them, and Yu realizes he's struggling to think of something to say. Akira opens his mouth a couple of times, apparently struggling with the same thing. There's still something awkward between them, the difference of five years of time and experience that Yu has no idea of. When they're in the labyrinth, or talking about Persona, anything like that, it's not so hard. Yu can talk to Akira just like anybody else. But... here? When there's nothing urgent to talk about, it's just harder.

"I'm going to head up to the roof for a while," Akira says at last. "Just to kind of clear my head before I try and sleep."

"Goodnight," Yu says.

"Night," Akira answers, and heads up the stairs.

Yu waits a second until the older Akira is out of sight before turning to the younger one. For a minute or so, though, he doesn't do anything. It's the first time all day that he's been more or less alone, or at least alone enough to really stop and think. And there is so much that's happened in the last few hours that needs consideration.

There are other people out there with Persona. One of them is the Trickster, who is also Akira, who is here _twice_ , and who might be remembering some honestly terrible things about what's going to happen. And Yu has no idea how they're supposed to do anything to fix any of that. He doesn't know how he's going to get himself and his friends back home. 

...but at least he can do something here.

Yu crouches down and puts his hand on Akira's shoulder, shaking him gently until the boy's eyes slide slightly open. For a second he looks confused, then he remembers where he is. "I didn't mean to fall asleep," he says, and then yawns.

"It's okay," Yu says. "It's been a long day." He helps Akira stand. "Come on, we're setting sleeping bags and things up in the gym. That'll be more comfortable than passing out against the wall."

"Okay."

He doesn't say anything much on the way there, but when they're right outside he asks, sounding a little tentative, "Yu?"

"Yeah?"

"...can I sleep by you?"

"Sure," Yu says. "Of course."

"I got kind of used to it," Akira admits, and Yu smiles.

"Me too," he says. He doesn't have siblings so he's never had to share a room with anyone until this year, but he really has gotten used to always having someone else around. "Come on, let's go in and find some space."

The gym's only about half full when they go in, with a few people actually asleep, and more sitting around talking quietly or getting ready for bed. The boys are closer to the door, while the girls are down at the far end, with what seems like a very definitive line in the middle between them that the boys haven't gone past.

(Later, he'll learn that Teddie _had,_ somewhat predictably, tried to get a closer look at the girls, and been driven away when Chie threw a shoe at him)

(Chie uses her shoes as weapons. Yu is very aware of this, because he's had to spend the past several months purchasing increasingly deadly versions of them from the slightly confused man at the metalworks shop in Inaba. The bruise that her shoe leaves on Teddie is enough to keep the rest of the boys on their own side of the gym for the rest of their time together)

For a second, the whole scene hits such a balance of absolutely absurd and shockingly normal that Yu wants to start laughing. He doesn't, though, because this is day one of he has no idea how long, and convincing everyone else that he's lost his mind right at the beginning is probably going to be a bad start. 

Akira falls asleep again almost immediately, but Yu stays up for a while. There's not much choice, since his mind is spinning in circles that won't let him sleep easily. He watches as the last few people trickle back in from wherever else they'd been in the school, and gradually everything goes quiet as the group falls asleep.

The only exceptions are Zen--who is with Rei on their own in a corner of the gym, wide awake and alert as he watches over her--and the older Akira. He hasn't come in yet at all, which Yu sincerely hopes is because he'd grown up with the same bad habits about mornings and waking up early that he's already showing at twelve.

The other alternative is that something _else_ has gone wrong, and Akira has managed to walk face first into it, which would be bad because...

Well, they just really don't need any more trouble right now, do they?

-//-

_Day 1_

_Evening_

-//-

Lavenza chooses her moment carefully, and waits until she's reasonably sure that Akira will be alone before going to find him.

She's nervous. He will have grown, in the years between his time and hers. He will have changed. Five years, for a human, is the difference between being a child and being nearly grown. Lavenza is not sure if he will have changed so much that she won't recognize who he is anymore, and selfishly, she doesn't want to see that happen. If things had gone the way they are supposed to, and if they hadn't met until he came to be a guest of the Velvet Room, then she is sure she would have had no problems with _whatever_ kind of person he has grown into. 

If they had never met when he was a child, she wouldn't have to feel now that she's at risk of losing him. 

(But it also means that she never would have had him as a friend)

Margaret has already passed along to Lavenza what Akira had first told her--that in the time he'd come from, she is _gone_. That's another complication in the uncertain mental calculus of how to approach him. It sounds like things in his time are complicated and difficult, and Lavenza thinks that maybe seeing her will only make things _harder_ for Akira...

She finds him on the roof. It's light up here, the same consistently bright, sunny day it has been since they all entered this place. Time does not seem to move here, and so even while most of the collection of teenagers in the school have dropped off into sleep from sheer exhaustion, up here it still looks like it could be early afternoon. Lavenza takes this in over the course of a second or two, and then turns to where her trickster stands at the far end of the roof. He's leaning against the fence built up around the edge, arms up against it so that he can rest his forehead on his arms as he looks out.

He's gotten taller in the space between her time and his, Lavenza notes. He's grown up in a way she imagined that she had mentally prepared herself for, but hasn't. The sight of him suddenly makes her feel small and young, for all that she's been alive longer than he has. But she steels herself against the feeling, and calls to him.

"Trickster!"

-//-

(Akira tenses at the sound of the voice, and only after a long, blank moment of not even knowing what to _think_ , does he manage to turn around)

-//-

Lavenza sees his sixteen year old face for the first time, and it's leaner, not a child's face, but instantly recognizable to her. It's the eyes, she thinks. Even behind the glasses, Lavenza knows his eyes. She's seen them looking at her and sparking with trouble, seen them curious and eager to know anything she'll tell them, seen then fierce and determined to not give in. 

She's seen them afraid too, when he awoke his Persona. Deeply hurt, when they fought about whether he should come back to the TV World. Those eyes look at her now, and through them Lavenza can see the whole of who he is. Still the same Trickster that she knows, only--more. More stubborn, more confident, and certainly more _trouble_.

-//-

(She's exactly the same, Akira thinks, and it shouldn't be a surprise because of course she must have come from 2011, but seeing her stand there, calm and constant and the way that he remembers her, is the most reassuring thing that he thinks he's ever seen)

(Lavenza is here. She's standing in front of him, she _exists_ , and even knowing that she's come out from the past does not undermine this reminder that she is still real. He can feel the bond between them, mismatched because of the time difference, stronger from him than from her, but still alive, like a heartbeat between them)

-//-

Lavenza feels the strength of the bond between them as he looks at her, and feels a smile curl up around her face in response. The promise of the bond between them growing stronger is something beautiful, to her. 

"I've heard from my sister that it may have been a while since we've seen each other," she says.

"For me," Akira says. His eyes drop for a second, and he looks uncomfortable before he manages to meet her gaze again. "Yeah. Is that really the thing that you want to talk about now, though? It--" An expression of guilt shifts across his features, there and then gone again, easy to miss if Lavenza hadn't been watching him so closely. "I didn't know that you would be here, when I said that to Margaret. I didn't want you to have to worry."

"About the fact that I won't be able to be there for you?" she asks. "Of course I'm worried, Trickster." 

"Not about that," Akira says. "About--I can _handle_ what's happening to me, but I don't know what's happened to you."

There's space between them still, because Lavenza had stopped a little distance away, to take him in before she said anything. She closes the space now, though, and he shifts to make room for her next to him. He sits, inviting her with a gesture of his hand to sit with him as well. It puts them on the same level when she does so, which eases the last of the still lingering tension between them.

"You must know something, though," Lavenza says. "Tell me about it."

"But--"

"Trickster."

He gives in, and tells her what he's learned over the course of the two and a half months since the Velvet Room opened to him. About a dream he'd had about her in pain, about his best guess of where to go to look for her, about the prison that the Velvet Room has become for him, and the twin wardens that guard it.

This last part is what bothers Lavenza the most. 

"You've met my sister Margaret, it sounds like," she says to Akira. "Before today."

"Yeah," Akira agrees. "And Elizabeth too, actually."

Her eyebrows shoot up, and she has a brief mental image of the sheer amount of chaos that the two of them could cause if they ever had a reason to work together. "You've... met Elizabeth?" she asks.

"Only briefly," Akira says.

Lavenza relaxes slightly. A brief meeting would... probably not be enough for major damage.

"Well," she says. "Then you at least have an idea that those of us who govern power from within the Velvet Room are a family."

He nods. "Does that mean that you know Caroline and Justine?" he asks.

"I do _not_ ," she tells him, and from the expression on his face he understands some small fraction of what this means. He can't understand the full disaster of it, because he does not know how seismic it is for someone else to be able to fuse Persona from within the Velvet Room. It should not even be possible for anyone outside Lavenza and her siblings to fill that role.

Why would Igor even _allow_ something like that?

"So what does that mean?" Akira asks. "Who are they, if they're not your siblings?"

"I'm not sure," Lavenza tells him.

"Okay," Akira says. "Uh--wow."

"Wow?" she echoes.

"I don't hear you admit that you don't know something very often."

"I don't know everything," Lavenza tells him. She gives a soft, half smile, but her mind is still working. There are so few that _can_ tend to the Velvet Room, so few with the ability to do what Akira has described his twin wardens as being capable of. If she did not know him as well as she does, Lavenza would have simply assumed he was _lying_ \--it's by far the most reasonable explanation.

But she does know him, and so she does not entertain for a moment the idea that he could be lying or even in some way mistaken about what he's telling her. "I will have to think about this," she tells him, forming the words slowly. "It's just that I can't quite see what all this means, yet."

"I'm sorry I had to tell you about it," Akira says. "If there's nothing we can do about it, I'm sorry you're going to have to know ahead of time."

"I didn't say there was nothing we could do," Lavenza says. "I said that I didn't understand it. _Yet_." She sighs. "And in any case, it's very likely that none of us will remember this afterwards."

"I heard people talking about that," Akira says. "And it makes sense, except..."

He hesitates. Lavenza grateful for the chance to change the subject and talk about something other than her replacements in the future, asks, "Except what, Trickster?"

"I think I'm starting to remember?" he says. 

"You're remembering being here before?" Lavenza asks.

"Not everything," he says. "Which would have been, you know, actually _really_ convenient. But there's been a couple of almost muscle memory things. Like the way the labyrinth throws you off balance when you first walk in, so you have to brace yourself. Or even which booth had the labyrinth in the first place. I've only gotten one _actual_ memory back since we came here."

He tells her about meeting Zen and Rei, and his memory of hearing, when he was younger, that Rei had died. 

"I wouldn't be surprised that being here again could trigger some things," Lavenza says thoughtfully. "You're physically reliving a part of your life that you've already seen. I'm not surprised that you would have--flashes. Especially about something as deeply emotional as this."

"I don't want to see Rei die," Akira says. "I don't want _anyone_ to die here. I'm--would that even be possible? To change things that I already know are going to happen?"

"I wouldn't think so," Lavenza says. "But I don't suppose that's going to stop you from trying." Just a few hours ago, a twelve year old Akira had declared that he was going to try and find a way to cheat his way into remembering. Lavenza has no doubt that this older version will be even less likely to give up on something just because it should not be possible.

He grins, and the expression shows Lavenza that he hasn't changed as much she was afraid he might have. It's so familiar that something in her chest feels like it's seized up at the sight. "Not for a second," he tells her.

In the face of this, something in Lavenza feels like it's floating. It doesn't make sense, because things are _bad_. She is going to disappear in less than five years, and there's a girl here who is at risk of dying. None of them has any idea what had brought this place into being in the first place, or how to get out again.

But she feels strangely buoyant, almost _giddy,_ at the sight of the smile on Akira's face. It's mischievous, the same smile that she is used to seeing on his five years younger face. This is the person that has dragged her away from the dull certainty of her life and her duty as an attendant of the Velvet Room. Who had, through sheer stubbornness, refused her insistence that he should stay away from the metaverse, and instead gone plunging into it all, dragging her with him into trouble she can't even bring herself to dislike.

And none of that has been paled at all with time, she sees. It's been tempered and strengthened, so that instead of the impish undercurrent of _can I get away with this_ that she's used to seeing, there is the confident assurance that _yes I can_.

"Akira," Lavenza says. 

"Yeah?"

"If things are--wrong, in the time that you've come from, and I'm not there for you, then I'm glad I've gotten the chance to see the kind of trickster you're growing into."

They're still sitting, still facing each other from across the very small distance between them. He reaches out now with one hand, and after a moment of hesitation, Lavenza leans forward to fit hers into his open palm. 

"I _promise_ ," Akira says softly, squeezing her hand gently. "That wherever you are in 2016, I am going to find you."

She should tell him not to. She should tell him that she is an attendant of the Velvet Room and he is her guest, and it is her job to help and support him. Not the other way around. 

Instead, in a sudden burst of honesty, she says, "I'm scared."

-//-

(Akira can feel the way that her hand shakes inside of his, and almost does not believe it. Lavenza doesn't get scared. Lavenza is, and has always been, like a rock

"I know," he says. "And I'm sorry.")

-//-

Lavenza knows that whatever's going to happen is going to be extremely bad. Worse, she thinks, than Akira even realizes--there's no way that he can fully understand the lengths that someone would have to go to, to separate her from the Velvet Room and from her guest. And she is terrified to know that is still waiting for her in the future.

"I shouldn't ask this of you," she says. "But don't--forget me, Akira."

"I won't," he says. "I couldn't."

-//-

_Day 2_

_Morning_

-//-

Futaba has never slept in a room with so many people before. She dimly remembers sometimes crawling into bed with her mom when she was very small and scared to sleep alone. More recently, she's taken Morgana once or twice overnight, but of course that _barely_ counts. Other than that, though, she's always slept alone. She doesn't have siblings. She'd never even done sleepovers with her friends. Before the Phantom Thieves, she's never even really _had_ friends.

And being suddenly forced to sleep in a large, open gym with so many other people is not her idea of a good time. She keeps to the edge, sticks close to Ann (who is at least familiar), and does her best to not actually sleep with one eye open. And it's still not a _great_ night's sleep, even after she eventually drops off, but at least she does manage a few hours.

When she wakes up, for a second, she's disoriented. There are people nearby whispering _giggling_ , which is not a sound that Futaba has ever woken up to before. She rubs at her face and feels around for her glasses. When she finds them she shoves them onto her face, at which point things solidify enough for her to see who's doing the whispering.

Ann is sitting together with a couple of the girls from the Investigation Team. Rise (still looking _way_ too young to Futaba, even though she'd researched her after they met, and has seen plenty of her older videos from when she was this age) and another girl whose name takes a couple seconds to filter through Futaba's brain. Yukiko? She's pretty sure that's right. 

Rise notices Futaba watching them before anyone else does, and waves a bright good morning to her. Futaba tries to smile, because who knows how long they're going to be here, but it comes out first as a grimace and then as a face splitting yawn. "What time is it?" she mumbles.

"Who knows?" Ann asks. 

"I think it's somewhere around February 2014," Yukiko says brightly. "On average."

Because she and her friends are from 2011, and the Phantom Thieves--plus Haru and Makoto--are from 2016. Sure. Checks out, mathematically. Or close enough.

"I meant the time, though," Futaba says, as she starts to look around the rest of the gym. There are a couple of people still asleep over here--Haru for one, and... (names, names, _names_ ) ...Chie? Chie. About half of the boys down at the other end of the gym are awake too, as far as Futaba can see from where she is. The rest of them are still fully horizontal.

"My phone says it's a little after eight," Ann tells Futaba. "But I don't know if that's true. Time feels--weird, here."

"Probably because the sun never went down last night," Futaba says. She pulls herself up so that she's sitting, but keeps the sleeping bag wrapped around her. "What were you whispering about before I woke up?"

"We're watching Yu try and wake the boys up," Rise says. 

"I think Yu's the only one here that actually likes mornings," Yukiko says. 

"I know I don't," Futaba mumbles, but since _she_ has to be awake right now, she figures that she can at least watch other people be forced awake too. She joins in with watching Yu wake up Yosuke by pulling his pillow away and then refusing to give it back, which gets a laugh from everyone and some brief applause from Rise. It's quiet applause, not enough to get any of the boys' attention from across the gym, but it does wake up Haru.

("Sorry," Rise says, giving the older girl an apologetic look)

("Don't worry about it," Haru tells her, waving the concern away and trying to look composed even though her eyes are still only halfway open)

Then Yu goes on to baby Akira, who responds to Yu's first attempt to shake him awake by burrowing down into his sleeping bag as far as he can get. Judging from Yu's whole body posture of _why would I expect anything else_ , this is something they've been through before.

"Oh my _God_ ," Ann says. "He's adorable."

"Who?" Rise says. "Yu?"

"No," Ann says. "Akira. I mean--" she gestures with her hands close together. "Younger Akira. He's like a mini version of the real one."

"They're both real," Yukiko points out.

"And I don't really see that he's all that cute," Rise says, tilting her head slightly to one side. 

"Neither do I," Yukiko says. "But I guess that to us he just looks normal to us at that age."

"He is a little adorable, though," Haru says, apparently awake enough now to join in the conversation. Ann and Yukiko both move over to make space for her to sit with them, and even the less than sociable Futaba is sort of relieved to see Haru reaching out to them. So far, she and Makoto have mostly stayed as far away from everyone else as they can get, whispering who knows what to each other up on the third floor most of the time. "Is that... a strange thing to say?"

"It is not," Ann says. "He's _cute,_ look."

By this point, Yu has at last managed to get baby Akira out of his sleeping back and up onto his feet. But the kid is leaning against the older boy, hair sticking up in every direction, sort of hunched in on himself like he'd _really_ rather be curled up asleep.

Ann and Haru _aww_ in unison.

"I think he looks much cuter older," Rise says thoughtfully. "Like--you know. Cute boy kind of cute. He sort of grows up dark and mysterious, doesn't he?"

"It's the way he kind of hides behind his glasses," Yukiko agrees.

"You think so too, don't you?" Rise asks, pouncing on this.

"Well," Yukiko admits. "A _little_ bit, maybe."

"Where is Akira--" Haru cuts herself off, hesitating for a second. "I'm sorry, the older Akira?"

"I think Morgana woke him up earlier," Ann says.

(Futaba snorts a laugh because that tracks as something Morgana would do. He can be _very_ insistent about sleep schedules)

"And then I think he went with a couple of the boys to see if the locker room showers are working," Ann continues, unperturbed by the laugh.

"I hope so," Rise says, wrinkling her nose. "Can you imagine being stuck in here with a bunch of boys and no shower?"

"Ugh," Futaba says, pulling a face. 

But luckily Akira comes back in then with Yosuke and Yusuke--that's going to get confusing, Futaba thinks--all three of them with wet hair that shows they _have_ actually found working showers.

"There's a relief," Yukiko sighs.

They watch as the boys have a talk with Yu, too quiet to hear from where they're all sitting. The talk starts out relatively calm, gets more emphatic, and then the older Akira moves forward, physically picks up the smaller one, and sweeps his protesting younger self into an awkward fireman carry that has _all_ the other girls in their little cluster biting back laughter and little _awww_ noises.

"Alright," Rise admits. "He is... a little bit adorable."

"I dunno," Futaba says, standing up and thinking that she'd kind of like to find out if there are working showers in the girl's locker room, too. "I think he's too much of a little shit to actually be cute."

-//-

_Day 1_

_Evening_

-//-

Things slowly come together. 

There's no real moment for Makoto when she realizes that _yes,_ okay, things all make sense now, but instead there's a gradual filtering of rumors into fact, as the details of what's going on bounce around the assembled group and solidify into something that makes a certain kind of sense. When Akira and Yu gather everyone together, that helps a little. So do the people that hear she and Haru are new to all this, and take the time to answer what must seem like very basic questions. 

It all sounds insane, sure, but Makoto doesn't like to think that she's the kind of person that would deny the evidence of her own eyes. There obviously _is_ something strange going on here, which is proved by the fact that this isn't Shujin anymore, by the insistence of half the people there that it should be 2011, and by Akira's cat turning into--not a cat? Something that looks like a cat but walks on two legs and _talks_. 

"We had no idea what we were doing when we went looking for the Phantom Thieves," Haru says thoughtfully, when the two of them have retreated back to the third floor area that they've more or less claimed for their own. It's--awkward to be around everyone else. They all have this secret in common that Makoto and Haru just aren't a part of, and Makoto hates the way that feels. Better to stay up here, talking things over between themselves. "We couldn't have seen any of this coming, could we?"

"No," Makoto says. "Even after we figured out that Akira was part of this, there's no way we could have guessed any of the rest of it." She looks over at Haru, who hasn't lost her usual air of calm, even here. "Doesn't that bother you?" she asks. "At all?"

"It makes me feel a little bit better, actually," Haru admits "If it was impossible for us to figure any of this out, I don't feel like we failed."

Makoto does. It's not just that they'd failed to figure out the Phantom Thieves' method--which would have been difficult, as Haru points out--but that she'd been so _completely_ wrong in trusting Akira as part of their group.

(She'd only just been starting to think of him as a friend)

She doesn't say this out loud, though, because arguing with Haru will only lose her the only friend she has here that isn't involved with everything that's going on. So she keeps her thoughts to herself, and instead changes the subject completely "What's it like in there?" she asks.

"The labyrinth, you mean?" If Haru is surprised by the sudden change of subject, she hides it well. That's one thing Makoto has noticed about her in the past, and which she's been especially grateful for since they ended up here--Haru is hard to ruffle, and even when things get very bad, she stays poised and composed. 

"Yes," Makoto says. "You were in there yesterday for a little while, weren't you?"

"A few minutes," Haru says. "Yes. And it was--" She stays calm, as ever, but her eyes are troubled. "Strange. Stranger than it is out here, even."

There's a long pause. Haru seems to be considering whether or not to say anything else. Makoto tries to look as encouraging as she possibly can, and eventually Haru does continue. "The thought did just occur to me," she says. "While I was in there with Akira--while he was fighting, and I couldn't do anything but watch--I sort of had this thought that maybe if I was a part of this, I wouldn't tell anyone either." She doesn't quite meet Makoto's gaze as she continues. 

"I mean, look around us. Look at the labyrinth, and those _Shadows_. We thought we were looking for some vandals. When we realized how much work Akira had put into covering it all up, we thought maybe he was doing something more than taping up calling cards. But we never would have guessed this, and now we've stumbled into some kind of alternate dimension."

"So you're saying that Akira was right to do what he did?" Makoto asks.

"I think he might have been," Haru admits.

For a few minutes, neither of them says anything. Makoto, even as she tries hard to think of anything else, keeps flashing back to the conversation she'd had with Akira after they talked to Ann about her potentially being part of the Phantom Thieves. About her dad and Akira's guardian, about how whether sometimes it's right to look the other way when someone does something wrong. 

"Do you think it would be dangerous for us to go into the labyrinth?" Makoto asks at last.

"I do," Haru says. "Yes, actually." She looks at Makoto like she's afraid that she's gone a little bit crazy, which--does seem like a fair reaction. "Why do you want to go in at all?"

"Because," Makoto says. "You said it yourself-- _look at the labyrinth. Look at those Shadows_. Well, I haven't seen either of those yet. I... want to see them." She wants a better understanding of what exactly is going on here.

"And so you want the two of us to go in alone," Haru says. "Without anyone that could actually fight a Shadow if we run into it?"

Makoto is privately not convinced that it would be impossible to fight a Shadow just because they don't have a Persona between them. She's learned self defense, and they can come up with something if they have to, surely. "They didn't attack you right away, did they?" she asks.

"Well--no."

"We'll just go to take a look," Makoto says, starting to walk. "I'll go alone if you really don't want to come, but--" But she needs to see for herself. She needs to know if Akira had been lying just to hurt them, or if he'd had a truly good reason.

( _"Sometimes there are things worth looking the other way for.")_

"Now?" Haru asks.

"Before anyone else gets there," Makoto says. "I'm assuming it will take everyone else some time to coordinate and get over there--" Her time in student council has taught her that there are few things more difficult than wrangling a group of high school students toward a common purpose. "So we should have some time before anyone else shows up. Come on."

(And she's _almost_ right about that. If Akira--the younger one--hadn't gotten bored waiting for everyone else to finish getting ready and wandered down just in time to see them go in, no one at all would have known where they'd gone)

(On the other hand, since he _immediately,_ and without pausing to think, runs inside after them, there's still no one that knows where they've gone)

Makoto's first impression of the labyrinth--after a disorienting transition where she does not quite feel like she's completely in either the labyrinth or the school--is of space. She's heard the others talking about how long it would take them to get through, but somehow she's still been imagining it as the size of the classroom that should have been there.

But no. Just the part that she can see is easily larger than any high school classroom, and judging by the set of doors she can see ahead of her, it continues significantly farther.

Her second impression is of someone almost falling into her, and she turns on instinct to catch the person before they can stumble flat onto their face.

"Ow," Akira mutters, and it takes Makoto a second to process the fact that (first) this is the younger one, who she has not spoken to at all so far and has in fact been avoiding because of the general strangeness, and that (second) he's wearing the kind of strange costume that she's heard some of the others talking about.

He backs up and she lets go of him quickly. "What are you doing here?" she asks, voice a little sterner than it might have been for anyone else. Leaving everything else aside, including the fact that she still doesn't know how angry she should be at the older Akira, this is a twelve year old _child_. She's not comfortable with the idea of letting him walk in here to face whatever nebulous dangers are waiting.

"I saw you come in," Akira says. "And everyone says you don't have Persona, so I came to help."

"That's very nice," Haru says. "But--"

"But we can manage on our own," Makoto finishes firmly. "You should go back."

Akira surprises her by shaking his head with equal firmness. She'd expected him to back down, but he plants himself in place and looks absolutely, stubbornly determined. " _No_ ," he says. "What if you run into Shadows?"

"We're going to be careful," Makoto says, trying (and, from his expression, failing) to reassure him.

"You can still be careful with me here," Akira says. 

"Akira," Haru tries. "You should--"

"I don't want you to get hurt," Akira says, and as he looks up at them with his face young and open, it makes Makoto actually hesitate. There's something earnest on his expression that is entirely believable. 

"Why not let him come, Makoto?" Haru asks quietly. "If he can fight, he'll be able to help us. And if we send him back, he might tell someone."

That's a good point, actually, and Makoto opens her mouth to say as much when Akira says hotly, "I _wouldn't_ tell. I'm good at keeping secrets."

"At lying, you mean," Makoto says.

" _No_. At--" He hesitates. Flushes. "Well.... I guess so."

They watch each other for a couple seconds, and Makoto wonders if Akira knows that the older version of him has been lying to her and Haru. The question is answered when he looks down at her shoes and asks, "I lied to you in the future, didn't I? I heard--um. _Me_ talking about it to Yusuke."

Makoto doesn't exactly know what to say.

"I'm sorry about that," Akira says. "I mean--I haven't done it yet, so I don't know if it matters to you that I'm sorry. But I understand why I will."

"And why is that?" Haru asks.

Akira turns to her, looking grateful for her kinder tone.

"Because look at all the _friends_ I'm going to have by then," Akira says, with just a hint of wonder in his voice. "And all of them have Persona, and that means that if anyone ever found out about them, they'd be in danger." He kind of smiles self consciously, like he realizes how serious he's sounding. "I mean... right now it's basically just Yusuke that has a Persona and can come into the TV World with me. But I know I'd do all kinds of things to keep him from getting in trouble for it. If it was a whole _bunch_ of people?" He shrugs. "I'd definitely lie to keep them safe. I'd feel bad about it, because--because lying _should_ feel bad, especially when it's to your friends. But I'd do it."

It's more of an explanation than the older Akira has given either Makoto or Haru so far. Makoto isn't sure if he's actually avoiding them, or if they're avoiding _him,_ or if he's just been incredibly busy. But whatever the truth is, the three of them just... haven't really talked. This is an explanation that makes sense, though. Makoto's not sure yet if it's one that she's willing to accept, but at least she can understand it. And with his earnest conviction backing the words up, Makoto is at least willing to look the other way long enough for Akira to come with them.

( _"Sometimes there are things worth looking the other way for.")_

(Can the Phantom Thieves be one of those things too?)

"You can come," Makoto says, and Akira's face lights up as he smiles. 

"Thank you," he says, and scurries ahead. "Come on, I'm pretty good at avoiding Shadows."

He is, as it turns out. As they head deeper into the labyrinth, walking for close to twenty minutes, they manage to run into Shadows only once. Akira is clearly unfamiliar with the labyrinth itself, but he knows how to move around in ways that Shadows don't notice him. Alternately slow and careful, watching everything for the first sign of approaching enemies, then quick and darting from one patch of cover to another. He lingers near corners before going around them, considers each new route carefully.

Only once do they actually run into Shadows, and when that happens Makoto finally understands why everyone talks about this place like it's dangerous. Even if the particular Shadows that they run into turn out to be weak enough that Akira and his Persona--

(which does not look at all the the way that Makoto had imagined it would, when she first heard it described)

\--Akira and his Persona can take care of them easily.

"Okay," Makoto admits, in the aftermath of that fight. "Okay, that... maybe we _should_ head back."

"I suppose so," Haru agrees. "Did you see what you wanted to see in here, Makoto?"

Makoto hesitates. When she and Haru had first been talking about going into the labyrinth, it had been mostly spurred by wanting to see for herself what everyone else is facing, so that she could have a better idea of how upset she should actually be about everything that's happened lately. To make up her mind about how to _feel_ about all of this. And she thinks that... yes, she probably has seen enough. She's still going to have to do some thinking about it all before she makes up her mind, but she's seen plenty, she thinks. "Yes," she tells Haru, with a thoughtful frown on her face. "I saw what I wanted to see, and I'm ready to go back now."

"I think it's this way," Akira says, gesturing back. "And then--left?"

"Right," says Makoto, who has been paying attention.

"Right," Akira says, with a sheepish smile. "Then we can--"

A new voice suddenly interrupts, suddenly enough to make all three of them jump a little. It doesn't seem to come from anywhere specific, but is as clear as if it was coming from someone standing right next to them.

"What are you guys _doing_ in there?"

"...Futaba?" Akira asks, cringing a little at the volume and tone of her voice. 

"Who else would it be?"

"Well, I mean, you could have been Rise--"

" _What are you doing in there?"_

"Hi, Rise," Akira says, voice even smaller now.

"Listen," Futaba says, and Makoto has finally connected the dots between being able to hear these two while they're nowhere nearby. _Navigators_ , everyone calls them. "You three have to get out of there right now because you're about to run into an F.O.E."

"Those really strong Shadows?" Akira asks.

"Yes, the really strong Shadows! You don't have any Goho-M on you?"

"Um," Akira says, starting to move a little faster. "No."

"Then get moving," Futaba says. "There's a group going in but the F.O.E. is _really_ close to you. If you're not careful you'll run right--"

They come flying around the corner and straight into an enormous, larger than life playing card.

"--into it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *looks nervously at the complete lack of progress through the first labyrinth*
> 
> I swear, PQ is not going to take fifteen chapters to get through! I _will_ speed this up soon lol.
> 
> Also, I think it's time to finally admit that this fic is going to end up being Akira/Lavenza. I've been trying to avoid that because (a) I was not planning it from the beginning, and I feel like it's cheating to add a ship halfway through, and (b) it's going to make things _slightly_ more awkward when she finally comes back and I have to find a way to make sure she looks old enough for a non-weird relationship, but...
> 
> I mean I just don't think I'm fooling anyone at this point lol, I'm shipping them so much.


	21. Persona Q - Part 3

_Day 2_

_Morning_

-//-

Akira barely has time to suck in a panicked breath before the F.O.E. lets loose with an attack that hits not just him, but Haru and Makoto too. He lets out a surprised, winded noise and staggers back a step or two. The earlier fight with the other labyrinth Shadows hadn't hurt him too badly, but they _had_ gotten a couple of attacks in on him. So he knows that compared to the other Shadows around here, this card is--it's _crazy_ strong. He hasn't seen anything here that's close to this level. He hasn't seen anything _anywhere_ that's close to this level.

"You guys have to get out of there," Rise says in his ear. "Okay, Akira?"

"I know, I know," he says, because he _does_. His heart is racing a mile a minute, and all he can think about is the fact that he'd followed Haru and Makoto in here to protect them, so they wouldn't have to face Shadows alone without a Persona, and now it looks like all that's going to happen is that all _three_ of them are going to get hurt. "But Rise, it's standing in the way of where we need to go. If we run, we'll be going back into the labyrinth."

"If you _don't_ run, you're not getting out of there at all," Futaba cuts in.

"We're keeping an eye out for a clear path," Rise adds. "So if we tell you to run--"

"Then you have to _run_ ," Futaba finishes. "Right away. In the meantime, just--try and hold out, okay? Don't even bother attacking it, that thing has forty times as much health as the other Shadows in this area."

"Okay," Akira says, fighting down the sick feeling of panic that's starting to set in. Forty? 

"What were you _thinking_?" Futaba says, and for a second Akira glances sideways at Makoto. A part of him wants to protest that he hadn't wanted to people with no Persona to go running into the labyrinth alone, and he'd just been trying to protect them by following them inside. But he doesn't, because that would only be getting them into more trouble, and so staying quiet is a way of protecting them, too.

"Let's just focus on getting everyone out for now," Rise says, and to Akira's relief, Futaba lets the subject drop.

(He is going to be in _so much trouble_ over this)

The card attacks again, and although Akira gets his guard up in time to avoid being knocked off his feet, and Makoto dodges out of the way at the last second, Haru is not so lucky. She takes the full force of the attack head on, and it brings her down all at once.

She shrieks, too, half shock and half pain, a sound that makes Akira feel like his heart is about to stop. This isn't what he'd wanted, _at all._ He'd followed them in here to help, and he hasn't done anyone any good.

Futaba and Rise are talking again, both of them at once, but Akira tunes them out as he dashes over to where Haru had fallen and drops to his knees next to her.

"She's okay!" he calls to Makoto, who is farther away and more at risk of being hit by the card if she tries to join them. "I mean--" Haru's eyes are closed and her breathing is ragged, but at least she's still--well, alive. On the other hand, if Haru is unconscious on the ground, it's going to be a lot harder for them all to get out of here. Even if he and Makoto find an opening to run, that would mean leaving Haru behind.

He doesn't want to leave Haru behind.

Akira looks up at Makoto, and for a heartbeat they just look at each other. Akira doesn't really know Makoto all that well, although the one thing he does know is that she doesn't trust him because of what he's going to do to her in the future. But for right now at least it feels like they're on the same page. The priorities in this fight have changed all in one second from finding a way to _run away as fast as they possibly can_ to _stand and fight so that Haru won't get hurt._

"She's not getting up, though," Makoto says. Her voice is very level and calm, which somehow makes Akira feel very slightly better. Her expression of dead set determination actually almost makes him feel bad for the Shadow. "She's not, is she?"

"No," Akira says. "And I don't think either of us can carry her, so we have to fight."

"You can't beat this thing!" Futaba says. "Listen, you guys just _can't_. Makoto doesn't even have a Persona."

"She looks like she's about ready to punch the F.O.E. though," Akira offers.

" _That's not going to help, Akira!"_

Right. Because she doesn't have an actual Persona. Akira takes a deep breath and stands back up, putting himself between Haru and the playing card F.O.E. It's focused on Makoto for the moment though, and it's next attack goes toward her. Akira holds his breath as it hits her, but although she skids back a foot or two, she manages--barely--to stay on her feet.

...yeah, they're really not going to be able to do this, are they?

(But what other choice do they have?)

"There's a group coming in from the entrance to help you guys out," Rise tells him. "So just hold out until then, okay?"

Akira doesn't actually say anything to her, but instead answers by shouting for Arsene and letting loose an attack on the playing card. It definitely connects, but Akira can tell that it's just not doing as much damage as they need to.

They go on like this for a little while. Akira calls Arsene for as long as he can, and Makoto actually actually does manage to punchthe playing card once or twice for a surprisingly large amount of damage. Akira had expected that to not work at all, but it _does_ , just--not enough.

And it's not going to last forever, because the card is getting hits in on them even while they're attacking it. Akira is younger and smaller than Makoto, and already a little bit hurt from the fight before this one, but she doesn't have a Persona to help keep her on her feet, and so they're going down at about the same speed.

Then out of nowhere, the F.O.E. hits Makoto with the same kind of attack as the one that had knocked Haru out, and it's just Akira left standing.

-//-

_Day 2_

_Morning_

-//-

Makoto blacks out for a second or two, but she claws her way back to consciousness and stays there through sheer force of will. 

Her vision is blurred, but she can see Akira bracing for another attack, buckling under the blow but not going down. He shouts at the card, something she can't quite focus on yet, but obviously meant to keep its attention on _him_ and away from her and Haru. It's a good effort, but not--not enough. And she'd barely been able to do anything to help even before the card knocked her down, so... 

So what is she supposed to do _now_?

_Is this something that you can really turn away from?_

...what? 

_There are times to turn the other way and times to face your struggle head on. Which is this?_

Something crystalizes in Makoto's mind. The half formed thoughts that have been chasing her since her talk with Akira days ago ( _"_ _Sometimes there are things worth looking the other way for"_ ) make a sudden sense. She _knows_ where she has to stand, not just in this fight here, but with everything that's happened lately. She knows where she has to stand, and it's not with the principal and his adherence to the rules. Nobody here is trying to _hurt_ people. They're fighting to keep themselves and their friends safe, and maybe--in a way that Makoto still only dimly understands--they're fighting for something bigger, too.

Makoto is not going to stand idly by.

_Will you show the world the strength of your rebellion? Will you show them what you fight for?_

There's something hard against Makoto's face. She pulls against it in an agony of pain and determination, digging her fingers in, scrabbling for purchase. She is desperate in a way she did not know she could be, and when she finally gets a good grip and _pulls_ , not even the blood dripping down her face can take away from the victory of the moment.

_Well, it's about time. Let's make a contract, shall we? I am thou, and thou art I. Are you ready to show your mask to the world?_

"Johanna!" 

And blue fire bursts from her along with something she knows deep down in her soul is her Persona. She gets an impression of a motorcycle, a glimpse of clothes she doesn't recognize, and a flash of sudden confidence that she is doing something _right_. Then the card is knocked back, flames licking up its sides, and turns to ash. Makoto stands for a second, swaying, then remembers all in a rush that she's not alone. She turns, taking in Haru--still lying unconscious on the floor--and Akira on one knee in front of her to protect her as long as he can.

He's staring at her with his mouth actually open, but after a couple seconds manages to pull himself together, bouncing up to his feet with a sudden surge of excited energy. "That was _crazy_ ," he says, forcing himself up onto his feet. "That was so, so crazy! You just, like--" he mimes tearing his own mask off, and makes a noise like an explosion. "You just like, forced your Persona out, I didn't even know you could do that."

"How does it usually work?" Makoto asks.

"You have to fight a Shadow version of yourself after it tells you all the parts of you that you don't like. And then you accept it, and it becomes your Persona." He grins lopsidedly. "I think this was probably better, we really didn't have time to fight your Shadow on top of the card thing."

Makoto feels exhausted just thinking about it. "Well," she says. "I don't think I would have been able to do it if you hadn't been keeping it off me. So... thank you."

She puts out her hand. He hesitates for a second, then shakes it. When he looks up at her, there's a hint of mischief in his smile. "You're welcome," he says brightly. "Queen."

"Queen?" she asks, raising her eyebrows and then realizing it won't even be visible behind her mask.

"Everyone from your time has codenames, right?" he asks. "And a Queen is one of the highest cards in the deck, and since you just, like _destroyed_ that card, I think it fits."

She doesn't hate it. Still, she feels obligated to point out, "A King would be higher. Or an Ace."

"Well, yeah," Akira says. "But you're a girl."

And from the finality in his tone, he seems to consider this an argument to which there can be no possible comeback. "Fair enough," Makoto allows. "How's Haru doing?"

Haru is doing no better and no worse than she had been before Makoto knocked the F.O.E. back with her Persona, but she gradually starts to wake up as they crouch over her. Akira asks Makoto if her Persona has any healing, and when she has absolutely no idea, he rattles off the names of a few of the healing spells until one of them feels weirdly familiar. _Diarama_ gets Haru back on her feet, and then that's all they have time for before the rescue team catches up to them.

It's the whole group, which surprises Makoto a little before she realizes that they'd been _that_ convinced of how strong the playing card is. 

"Yu!" Akira shouts, and weaves his way through the group, ducking past everyone else until he gets to the leader of the Investigation Team. Makoto can hear him--his voice is still high and young, easy to pick out even in this large of a group--narrating what had happened when she awoke her Persona.

Makoto flushes a little, slightly embarrassed by his sheer enthusiasm, and turns a little away.

The other Akira is standing there, a foot or two away, looking like he's just about to say something to her. 

"Hey," he says, everything in his posture screaming awkwardness and embarrassment.

"Hi," Makoto answers.

They stand there in awkward silence for a couple seconds, a little pocket of quiet within the larger group. Makoto still isn't quite sure what to say to him, but eventually she manages, "I wanted to say that--" just as he comes up with "I should have said this before, but--"

They both stop, and Akira shakes his head. "Let me just get this out, first?" he says. "I, um... I know that I kind of just dragged you and Haru into this and then left you to fend for yourselves. And you have every right to be pissed about that, and about the fact that I lied to you back at school. But--"

"You didn't want to let anything happen to your friends," Makoto interrupts. "I know." She jerks her head toward the twelve year old Akira, who is still chattering at Yu. "He made a pretty convincing case when we first came in here."

"It is definitely going to take some more time to get used to that," Akira mutters. His eyes drift sideways toward himself and Yu, then snap back to Makoto. "But I mean... yeah. That's basically right. The other Phantom Thieves are risking their lives in the metaverse to try and make things better, and I kind of ended up as leader. I have a sort of responsibility to do whatever I can to keep them safe." 

"No," Makoto says. "No, I mean..." It's hard to admit that she's wrong, but maybe not as hard as it would have been before coming in here and seeing Shadows, fighting an F.O.E., finding her Persona. "I think I can understand that. I'm--sorry that I put you in that situation."

"You didn't know," Akira says. "I'm sorry for lying."

"I think we're even," Makoto says. She smiles and he does too, and she wonders--are they good, now? Friends again? It feels like they are.

"Why'd you come in here in the first place, though?" Akira asks. "I mean--it worked out, because you got your Persona, but it could have seriously gone wrong."

"I wanted to see it," Makoto says. "I convinced Haru to come with me, and then he saw us come in and followed us." She jerks her head toward the smaller Akira as she says _he_ , rather than try to figure out how to refer to the other version of Akira while talking to him. 

"Oh good," Akira says, looking enormously relieved. "I honestly thought I--he?" Obviously he hasn't figured out how to refer to himself, either. "I was kind of worried that he might have talked you into it because it sort of seems like the kind of thing I would have done when I was twelve." Looking more cheerful now, he asks, "So do you think you would want to come and fight with us now that you have a Persona? I don't want to assume, or anything, but you'd be welcome."

"Honestly," she says. "I think I might. I..." She'd felt the power of her Persona, is still buzzing from it now, minutes later. She's seen what Shadows are like, and she can help to fight past them to figure out how they can all get home.

...but also she's still reeling from everything that's happened in the past few days, and now that the initial adrenaline has passed, she thinks she's going to pass out.

"Not right now," Akira assures her quickly. "Awakening a Persona is the kind of thing that usually makes you want to pass out for a day or so." 

"So this is normal?"

"Really normal," Akira assures her. "When I got mine, I think I got back to the real world, tripped over a table on my way back to bed, and just passed out for about fifteen hours." He grins, and jerks a thumb at Yusuke. "Fox fell asleep on our living room floor."

"As long as it's normal," Makoto says.

Akira nods. "You should be ready to fight by tomorrow," he says. "If you want to. And assuming we don't get to the end of the labyrinth by then."

"I'll think about it," Makoto tells him.

She ends up heading back to the entrance with Haru, the exhausted twelve year old Akira, and Morgana, who volunteers to go with them on the basis that they should have _someone_ that's still at full fighting strength in case they run into more Shadows.

Luckily they don't, and Makoto remembers essentially nothing else of the trip back to the gym, where she _immediately_ falls asleep.

-//-

_Day 2_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Haru is happy for Makoto and her newly awakened Persona.

She is, really. The undercurrent of jealousy and uselessness over being the only one that can't fight Shadows is an entirely separate issue, and one that should not subtract from her ability to wish her friend all the best.

When they get back to the school, Haru leaves Akira and Morgana talking to the two navigators, helps Makoto get to the gym so she can sleep, and then finds herself slightly at loose ends. There's nowhere she particularly needs to be, nothing she can do to be helpful, and a long stretch of time in which to do that nothing.

Haru knows that there are other people in this school, the ones that stay in the fortune telling booth and who only the older Akira and Yu seem to fully understand. As far as Haru has been able to glean, the three in there are all generally more knowledgeable about Shadows and Persona, without having specific knowledge about their situation here. Still, they're the only ones that aren't either asleep or busy with the labyrinth, so Haru heads up to the second floor where she finds the two younger ones carrying an armful of supplies out of the fortune telling booth. 

"Do you two need a hand with all that?" Haru asks.

"Yeah," the teenager--Marie, Haru remembers--says, and Haru finds an armful of supplies shoved at her immediately.

" _Thank_ you," says the other one. Lavenza.

"Of course," Haru says, and only then looks down at the odd collection of items she's holding. "What is all this for?"

"We have been looking for ways that we can help everyone while they're in the labyrinth," Lavenza informs her. "And it looks like there's a craft station set up as one of the booths that we can use to craft equipment for everyone."

"You mean that _I'm_ going to have to do it," Marie complains. "I keep telling you, I don't want to."

"It won't be as bad as you think," Lavenza says. 

"I don't even know _how_ to make all that stuff," Marie says.

"You've been in the Velvet Room for months now," Lavenza tells her. "I know you're not really a resident, but I think you've picked up on more than you think you have."

Marie gives a melodramatic sigh, and Lavenza coughs like she's trying not to laugh. 

"It sounds like you'll be working together, though," Haru says. "Right?"

"No," Marie snorts. "She's abandoning me to set up shop in the nurse's office."

"In case anyone gets hurt in the labyrinth," Lavenza tells Haru.

Haru shivers a little. She hasn't forgotten how hard the F.O.E. had been able to hit, and she thinks that maybe someone in the nurse's office with some kind of... mystical, Persona-based healing, is a _very_ good idea.

"And Margaret's staying in the Velvet Room to handle fusions or whatever," Marie continues, which makes no sense to Haru but makes Lavenza nod. "I guess there's something about this place that means all the Wild Cards can only summon one Persona in addition to their normal one, but then everyone _else_ can summon an extra one too, so _apparently_ that's going to take up all of Margaret's time and she isn't going to be around to help me either."

Haru has not followed all the details of the complaint, but she at least understands the tone of complaint. "Why don't I help you out?" she asks. "Obviously I don't know anything about this Velvet Room..." She shrugs. "Stuff? But I can help with moving things around and keeping it organized."

And Marie might be reluctant about having been given this job, but Haru is _very_ interested in the idea of actually being able to help.

"You'd do that?" Marie asks.

"Sure," Haru says. "I don't really have anything else to do while I'm here."

"Well--" Marie looks definitely flustered.

Lavenza stands on her toes so she can elbow Marie in the side. "You should say thank you," she reminds her.

"Yeah," Marie says. "Right. Thank you."

They reach the crafts booth, and all three of them are busy for a little while finding place for all the materials. Marie continues to complain for a little while, but at Lavenza's prodding is actually able to produce a few unusual things that can apparently be used as weapons and armor. Haru has no idea _how_ she's turning the apparently random junk into actual using items, but apparently neither does Marie, so that's probably fine.

Lavenza leaves them while Marie is staring at her hands with a _how did I do that_ expression, and Haru is shifting things around to make room and keep it all organized.

And, well... it's not exactly the excitement of fighting Shadows with a Persona, but it surprises Haru with how it gives her the same solid, hard work satisfaction that a good day of gardening does. 

"Hey," Marie says, when everything is more or less organized. "Are you sure you actually want to hang out here and help me out with this? Because I wouldn't hold it against you if you decide to bail. _I_ don't even want to be here."

"There's nothing else that I can really do to help," Haru says. "I can stay."

"Bet you could figure something out," Marie says. "Your friend got a Persona already, didn't she? Bet you could do that too."

"Maybe," Haru allows. "But I can't imagine that running into the labyrinth and _trying_ for one would be a good idea."

(Although a part of her very badly wants to)

"Probably not," Marie admits. "But it's like that thing Margaret's always saying--nothing happens in the Velvet Room without a reason. So... maybe you being here has a reason too."

It seems like Marie is actually making an effort to help Haru feel better, so she smiles brightly and says, "Maybe that's true." And then (to her slight relief), Marie doesn't press the issue any further.

"Hey," she says instead, after a little bit of time has passed in silence. "Do you, uh--"

And there's suddenly something so incredibly shifty about her eyes, that Haru gets the strange feeling that she's about to be offered some kind of drug. "Do I what?" she asks.

"Do you like poetry?" Marie asks.

...well, that had not been what Haru had expected. 

"I do," she says. "It's always been one of my favorite subjects in literature classes. Is that something you're interested in, Marie?"

"Well--" And there's still a second of that shifty eyed, almost _guilty_ look before Marie nods.

Which is how they end up having a lengthy conversation about rhyme and meter, while one floor below them, everyone else fights through a labyrinth of Shadow monsters.

-//-

_Day 2_

_Evening_

-//-

They finish the labyrinth late that day, fight a Queen of Hearts straight out of Alice in Wonderland, and rescue a stuffed rabbit from the chest she'd been guarding. Akira goes with Yu to the Velvet Room, where one of the four locks on the mysterious doors comes open, as if in response.

It's progress, of a kind. The doors are the obvious way out of this fake Yasogami, so seeing one of the heavy chains holding them shut suddenly unlocked is encouraging.

Akira had been up on the front lines for most of the day, only dropping back a few times to rest. He's in that final fight with the Queen of Hearts, though, close enough to see Rei's unhappy reaction to the rabbit. 

(He's been keeping half an eye on her all day anyway. Zen's never more than a step or two away from her, even while they're fighting, but Akira still can't stop _worrying._ He can't shake the memory out of his head, of Zen announcing to all of them that Rei is dead)

Maybe that's why he goes looking for the two of them, after the labyrinth. After everyone has split up to look for food or the showers or some time alone, Akira finds the two of them together in the hall where most of the food booths have been set up. Rei is munching away at a large plate of food, while Zen watches her with his customary eagle eyed gaze. 

"Do you guys mind if I join you?" he asks. 

"Sure!" Rei says. Zen nods, and Akira sits himself down at their table. It has actually been a _long_ day, without much chance to stop and eat in the middle, so he's sort of glad that he's found them here, of all places. He also thinks that it'll be a little bit easier to ask some of the questions he has in mind if everyone has food to concentrate on and look at while they talk.

"So are both of you doing okay?" he asks. "With the labyrinth?"

"We are both still in one piece," Zen tells him.

"Yeah," Akira says, trying not to think too much about how much he's worried that they _won't_ be in one piece for long. 

"I don't think I like it very much," Rei says, her brow furrowing slightly. "It was fun hanging out with everyone, but--" She stares at the food in front of her. "I didn't like--the end of it very much."

"You mean the fight with the Queen of Hearts?" Akira asks.

"Y-yeah," Rei says, and Akira doesn't believe her at all. She'd been doing fine for the entire labyrinth, even during the big fight at the end, and then she'd seen the rabbit and had looked instantly upset. 

Zen is watching Akira carefully, and Akira _thinks_ that he can read a little bit in the other teen's expression. That he'd noticed Rei's reaction to the stuffed rabbit back in the labyrinth too, but (unlike Akira, whose first reaction is to try and find out what's bothering her) Zen clearly wants to leave it alone.

Akira backs down. Zen obviously has nothing but Rei's best interests at heart, and since she genuinely doesn't seem to remember anything about herself or her own past, she might not even know why that stuffed rabbit had bothered her so much. Asking questions and upsetting her all over again isn't really going to do any good.

"Did you guys hear what happened in the Velvet Room?" he asks instead. "After we finished the labyrinth?"

"No," Zen says. "That is the blue room inside the fortune telling booth?"

"Yeah," Akira says. "Right. I went by there after the labyrinth just because... well, just because. But there's a couple of doors in there that have been chained up since we got here. One of the locks is open now."

"Because of the labyrinth?" Rei asks. "Because we got through it?"

"Probably," Akira says.

"Yay!" she thrusts both arms upward in an excited cheer. "So does that mean that if we find more labyrinths and get through them, we might be able to unlock the rest of them? And get out of here?"

"That would make sense," Akira says, unable to keep from grinning at her enthusiasm. "So we just have to hope there are three more labyrinths in here, I guess. Yu and a couple other people went to go see if they could find another one for us to start exploring tomorrow."

"We will be there when you find another one," Zen says with a little nod, and Akira finds himself hovering--not for the first time--on the edge of whether to say something. So far, the only people he's told about his single recovered memory are Yusuke and Yu, and neither of those conversations had been as in depth as they should have been.

As far as Akira knows, neither of them has told anyone else, either. Even Yu's plan to talk to Zen and Rei this morning had been derailed by Makoto, Haru, and the younger Akira running into the labyrinth, and things have been going non-stop since then. Now Akira's honestly not sure if he should be telling them about the memory--on the one hand, it seems fair to warn them. On the other hand, he can't imagine that it would do anything other than scare Rei and move Zen further into overprotective mode.

No. They deserve to know. However they react to it is up to them, but they should be able to make informed decisions for themselves.

"Before you decide that you're going to be there for the next labyrinth," Akira says slowly. "There's something I need to tell the two of you. You know how I went through all this already once, when I was younger?"

"Yes," Zen says. This is common knowledge by now, even to these two newcomers.

"Well I don't really remember anything that happened when I was younger," Akira says. "Except for one memory that just came back yesterday."

He doesn't go into all the detail as he explains. The overwhelming feelings of sadness and loss that had come with the memory had been deep and personal, and he thinks that the facts of what he'd seen and heard should be enough to warn them what's going on. That it's dangerous to keep fighting with them.

Sure enough, by the time he's done, Rei is wide eyed and afraid. "You--that can't be true!"

"I'm really sorry," Akira says. "And I know that we're going to do everything we possibly can to change that, but--you both deserved to know what you might be walking into."

"Zen," Rei says, shifting closer to him. "Zen, I don't want--" There's a kind of desperate terror in her voice. "I don't want to die!"

"I know, Rei," Zen says. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you." He looks back at Akira. "And I wish you had said something before we started the labyrinth today."

"I know," Akira says. "I should have. I'm sorry."

There's a long stretch of silence. Akira tries to keep eye contact with Zen, and finds himself completely unable to do so. There's something about the other teen that's desperately intense in a way that's hard to look at for too long.

"But I'll be there for the next one," Zen says at last. 

"Zen!" Rei protests. "We can't go back to the labyrinths! I'm--" Her whole face looks pale. "I'm scared, Zen. _I don't wanna die!_ "

"You should stay here," Zen tells her. "Where it'll be safe. But I'm going in."

Akira shifts awkwardly in his seat. "You... really don't have to," he says. "I'd understand if you wanted to stay out of the fight, after all that."

Zen stares at him for a second. It's very slightly uncomfortable, the way it feels like he's judging him up, but Akira doesn't look away, and Zen eventually says, "I remembered something too."

"You did?"

"Yes." He fidgets slightly, and his eyes flick sideways toward Rei for a second. "At the end of the labyrinth, when we defeated the Queen of Hearts, and found that box with the stuffed rabbit. I didn't remember much, but I--knew that there are four labyrinths. And that we'll need to find our way through all four of them before we can get out of here. Rei wants to get out. And I want my memories back. So if this will help her, I will keep fighting with you."

His tone leaves no room for argument whatsoever, so Akira nods. "Well--thanks," he says. "I don't think any of us is going to say no." And anyway, it's Rei that's going to--that _had died but is not going to again_. Zen, as far as Akira knows, is perfectly safe.

...

Well, he's not in any more danger than the rest of them are.

"I will be ready to fight with you all when you find the next labyrinth," Zen assures him. "Now I think I need to talk to Rei."

Akira takes this as the hint it so obviously is, and leaves the two of them alone.

-//-

_Day 2_

_Evening_

-//-

Yu does the rounds, after the labyrinth and after the trip to the Velvet Room where one of the door locks comes open. Margaret is quietly disapproving that it had taken him so long to stop by (...in his defense, it's been a busy couple of days), but warms back to her professional self quickly. They talk. Margaret has done some research into why Yu--and Akira for that matter, _both_ of them--suddenly can't summon more than one Persona.

"There is something in the nature of this place that changes the power of the Wild Card," Margaret explains. "And while I don't think that any of you will be able to call as many as you would normally."

"How many, then?" Yu asks.

"Likely just one, in addition to your first," Margaret says. "But I believe that all your friends should be able to summon an additional Persona as well."

"Really?" Yu says. "That's--" He's never really considered the idea that anyone else could summon more than one Persona, but if he's temporarily limited to one, then this is really going to help. "That's great, Margaret."

She nods. "And for as long as all of you are trapped here, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't all be allowed access to the Velvet Room. It may be helpful."

"Thank you," Yu says. "I'll let the others know."

Margaret nods, and as Yu turns to go she calls after him.

He pauses.

"I also wanted to talk to you," she says slowly. "About the Trickster."

Yu nods. He's been a little nervous, honestly, about this conversation. He's not completely sure he wants to hear Margaret's side of the story for why she's always seemed so wary of Akira. "I've heard you talking about him," he says. "To Igor and Marie in the Velvet Room."

"Still don't know why everyone's making such a big deal about it," Marie says, from where she's currently spread out on the floor, writing poetry

(Yu had seen a sheet of it when he first walked in--it's a little less lyrical than usual, and seems to focus heavily around the theme of _why do I have to craft the stupid equipment anyway_ )

(She'd looked incredibly relieved when the group finished for the day, and she'd been able to abandon her craft station until the next morning)

"Because," Margaret says patiently. "There is a time and a place where it will be appropriate for him to enter the Velvet Room as a guest. I have been worried all along that introducing him to things too early would... complicate things."

"That's really the only reason you were worried about him?" Yu asks. "He's not--" And he knows the answer, deep down, but he needs to hear it from her. "He's not dangerous?"

"No," Margaret says.

Yu snorts a laugh. "I should have asked you ages ago," he says. "I might not have been so afraid of Akira. I might not have--" He cut himself off and shakes his head. "It would have just been so much easier if I hadn't thought..."

"A Trickster is always trouble," Margaret tells him. "And from what my sister has told me, this one more than most. But he is not a bad person, no."

"Good," Yu says. "I mean, that's--" He shrugs. "Well, it's just good."

"It is," she agrees. "But what I really wanted to discuss was the relationship between the Trickster and my sister."

Her face suddenly looks even more serious than usual. More worried, and behind the worry, more... human.

"Is there something wrong?" Yu asks. "Your sister is... Lavenza, right?" He still hasn't had a chance to meet her, since she's down in the nurse's office. He has a hard time imaging what someone that is both Akira's friend and Margaret's sister would be like. 

"That's right," Margaret agrees. "And I..." She hesitates, then starts over, choosing each word carefully. "The two of them are very close. Close enough that I am... concerned."

"Why?" Yu asks. "It's not wrong for them to be friends, is it?"

"No," Margaret says. "But--"

She's not just worried, Yu realizes suddenly. She's uncomfortable, and trying to hide it.

"I don't want to see my sister have her heart broken," Margaret says. "Or for anything... worse, to happen."

Yu stares at her.

"Just something to think about," Margaret says. 

Yu has no idea _what_ to think about her implication that Akira and Lavenza might have something between them that is more than just friendship. "Thanks," he manages to say at last. "I'll... yeah. I will definitely be thinking about that." Whether he wants to or not, because that is not an idea he is going to be able to shake loose any time soon.

He ducks out of the Velvet Room then, before Margaret can say anything else that will confuse him even more. The halls are as full as ever, although mostly what they're full of are the strange, not-real people that the Phantom Thieves call cognitions. Yu weaves his way around them without much conscious effort, too lost in thought to worry much about where he's going.

The first actual person that Yu runs into--almost literally--is Yusuke. He's heading in the opposite direction that Yu is wandering in, flipping through a sketchpad and frowning vaguely.

"Sorry," Yu says, stepping to one side. "I wasn't looking where I was going."

Yusuke shakes his head, and Yu is hit with the same bizarre feeling of knowing him but also _not_ that he gets every time he sees Akira. It's not quite as bad, because Akira is someone that Yu sees every day. Yusuke is someone that Yu has only met for a relatively brief amount of time over the summer--he remembers a kid with wide eyes and a sketchpad always under one arm, who had stuck to Akira's side like glue from the day they were introduced.

The sketchpad is still there, but he's grown up. He's taller than Yu is now, and has an air of confidence to him that Yu has noticed in sixteen year old Akira, too. He wonders if it might be something that comes from growing up with a Persona. He knows that it can change a person--it steadies you, gives you something solid to hold onto no matter how bad things get. It's easier to feel confident, when you can know yourself through your Persona.

"You look distracted," Yusuke says now. "This might not be my place to ask, but--is everything alright?"

"Yeah," Yu says, forcing a smile. "There's just a lot to think about." He doesn't particularly want to talk about the Velvet Room or Margaret's comments on Akira and Lavenza. So before Yusuke can ask any questions, Yu changes the subject. "What about you? What are you up to?"

"I've just been talking to people," Yusuke says. "I was curious when exactly all of you were from. I mean, obviously before November, but--"

"Why would it have to be before November?" Yu interrupts. 

"Because otherwise you would have known about Akira," Yusuke says. "Since that was after..." He cuts off, frowning, and Yu realizes that he's more than a little curious himself, now.

"What's going to happen in November?"

"I'm--not sure I should say," Yusuke says. "Futaba has been talking a lot about how changes to the past can affect the future. So I'm not sure if I should say."

"We're going to forget everything anyway," Yu says, and Yusuke only hesitates a beat before nodding.

"That's a good point," he says. 

"So what happens in November?"

Yusuke looks around, spots a relatively quiet place nearby, and points toward it. "Do you mind if we sit and talk?" he asks, and then doesn't say anything else until they've moved over and settled themselves. "So," Yusuke says, when he's sitting. "November is when you found out about Akira."

"So he was about to tell me anyway," Yu says. "Even if--all this hadn't happened?"

"Not exactly," Yusuke says. "He-- _did_ tell me at the time that he was ready. He was _going_ to tell you everything."

"But?" Yu prompts. Because there obviously _is_ a but coming.

"But then Nanako was kidnapped into the TV," Yusuke says, and the words hit Yu like a physical blow, knocking the breath out of him from the sheer force of the fear that comes with them. After all they've done this year to rescue people from inside the TV, after months of investigations and fighting-- _Nanako_ had been kidnapped? Or _will be_ kidnapped? 

_Nanako_?

"It isn't as bad as it seems," Yusuke says quickly, and Yu realizes that his fear must be plainly visible on his face. "She was with Akira when it happened, so he tried to stop it and--well, he ended up getting taken, too."

This does not make Yu feel any better. Akira has a Persona, and can obviously take care of himself, but--

He's still one person, just a kid, and nothing about Yusuke's tone or body language implies that this is a good story.

Yusuke tells him the whole story, including how he had ended up in Inaba and helping them through the place in the TV World that he calls Heaven. 

"What was it like?" Yu asks, after the whole story has come out. "There are some... pretty bad places inside the TV World."

"I know," Yusuke says. "But this was... a little sad, but not as bad as it could have been. It--hmm." He reaches under his seat to where he'd put his sketchpad, and flips it open. "I can show you what it looked like," he says, as he starts to fill the page with quick, strong pencil strokes. Yu watches, waiting, for the few minutes it takes for Yusuke to finish.

He finally does, after a few minutes of silent work, and turns the pad so that Yu can see what he's drawn there. It's a little bit rough, and entirely in black and white, but it somehow gives the _idea_ of color, of a bright, rainbow filled Heaven. Even with the vague blurs that Yusuke has only half drawn, but which Yu can tell are Shadows, the place feels somehow peaceful. Or sad, like Yusuke had said earlier, instead of actively threatening.

Yusuke lets him look for a while, then takes it back, turning to a fresh page and tapping his pencil thoughtfully against it for a couple of seconds. 

"Everyone was fine," Yusuke says. He bites his lip for a second, then says, "Eventually." Yu wonders what had happened between the kidnapping and _everyone's fine_ to make Yusuke look so uncomfortable when he says _eventually_. Obviously seeing the expression, Yusuke hurries on with his explanation, saying, "And Namatame was arrested, and then Adachi was chased into the TV World not too long after that--"

"Whoa," Yu says, jerking forward in his seat. The earlier sense of vague reassurance he'd briefly felt at Yusuke's drawing of Heaven has vanished entirely. "Who's Namatame? And what does Adachi have to do with anything?"

"Namatame was..." Yusuke sighs. "I think he had a connection to some of the murder victims from the beginning of the year? Akira would know more, I wasn't there for a lot of it. But he was the one that did all the kidnappings. He saw the Midnight Channel, and thought it was a way to protect people by throwing them in."

"Well that's..." Yu searches for the right word, and even though it doesn't feel quite big enough, lands on, " _Wrong_."

Yusuke nods. "But he wasn't actually trying to hurt anyone. Adachi was the one who killed the first few people, and once he was figured out, he fled into the TV World."

Adachi. Part of Yu wants to deny that this is the same person as Dojima's partner, who has been in their house, who he's talked to several times since he moved to Inaba at the start of the school year. All this time--Adachi?

He realizes he's been quiet for a while, and that Yusuke has gone back to drawing. Yu's eye lands on the scene, a sketch of the street outside the Dojima house in Inaba that feels somehow disquieting despite its familiarity. There's an impression of thick fog, and as Yu watches, Yusuke starts to add in something that should not be there.

"I didn't see any of this myself," Yusuke says. "The last time I was in Inaba that year was to help rescue Nanako. But I've talked to Akira about it a lot. I know that the fog started to get worse in the real world after Adachi went to hide in the TV World. People started to act like they wanted to just... stop existing. And then eventually the fog got bad enough that Shadows started to appear in the real world."

He talks about it so matter of factly. It's a memory for him, or... or something even less than a memory, maybe. A story he's heard from someone else a long time ago. But for Yu, who is learning that all of this is still in his future, it sounds honestly terrifying. An Inaba overrun with fog and Shadows is not something he wants to deal with, ever. 

"It turned out okay, though," a new voice says, and Yu realizes that Akira--the teenaged one--has come up to join them. He's standing against the wall, eyes hidden behind his glasses, the rest of his face impassive. "Nobody got hurt, everything was fine." He looks over at Yusuke, and the two of them just kind of... look at each other, for a couple seconds. Yu doesn't exactly follow what passes between them, but at the end of it Akira shrugs and sits down too, taking a seat next to Yusuke.

"What happened?" Yu asks. "You were there for all of it, it sounds like."

He nods, but doesn't look particularly happy about the idea of talking about it. "Are you sure you want tot know?" he asks. "If you're not going to remember any of it anyway, you'll just be worrying about something you won't be able to change. And it... wasn't really a highlight about that year."

"I'll worry more if I don't hear it now," Yu says. "So what happened?"

Akira doesn't take any more convincing than that, to Yu's relief--this isn't something he's going to give in on, but he doesn't want to start an argument. He listens as Akira explains the weeks of watching the fog thicken in Inaba, how almost everyone in town had gotten gradually more depressed by it. Akira tells him how they'd figured out the fog and the depression were supernatural after his mask started to appear in the real world, and how hard everyone had worked after that to fight through the TV World to get to where Adachi was hiding. How it had taken them so long to find him that they'd almost run out of time, and how Akira had ended up staying in the real world to fight the Shadows there while everyone else went to confront Adachi.

"By yourself?" Yu asks, before he can stop himself. He knows by now that Akira--this version of Akira, who is sixteen and has had a Persona for half a decade--can fight Shadows as well as he can. But they're not talking about anything that had happened to Akira recently, but something that had happened when he was younger, and a lot closer to the twelve year old that had almost been killed by an F.O.E. just this morning.

"No," Akira says. "Well--yeah, kind of."

Yu raises his eyebrows.

"Your uncle and Nanako were with me," Akira says. "They couldn't fight Shadows, but they helped. And there were some other people that weren't affected by the fog."

"But you were the only one with an actual Persona," Yu says. "So you were the only one fighting."

"Yeah."

For a second, his casual attitude slips, and there's something vulnerable on his face that makes the resemblance between him and his younger self that much more striking. "I'm not going to lie," he says. "Sometimes it was terrifying. The fog was getting worse, the Shadows were getting stronger, and after a while Inaba and the TV World actually merged together. It was..." he hesitates. Yu doesn't ask any questions, because he can imagine what it must have felt like to watch Inaba being swallowed up by fog and Shadows.

He's not looking forward to facing any of this himself.

Akira sees his expression and shakes his head. "You'll get through it," he says. "You'll get everyone else though it, too. I don't know anyone else that could, but you did. Will. Whichever."

There's a dead-set confidence in his voice that surprises Yu. It seems like _more_ , somehow, than just the knowledge that this has already happened for him. Akira _trusts_ him. Absolutely.

"And you'll get us through this, too," Akira adds. "Not even a question."

Yu has no idea what to say to this, and just shifts uncomfortably in his seat as the silence stretches out. After a while Akira starts to look a little sheepish about it too. He makes an excuse and ducks out, leaving Yu alone with Yusuke again. 

"I don't get it," Yu says, when Akira has gone quickly around a corner. "The way he acts, it's like he's known me for years. But I'm only in Inaba for a year. _Akira's_ only going to be in Inaba for a year. I'm assuming there wasn't a lot of overlap after..." Well, after the end of the school year, after Dojima calls whatever child protective service is equipped to deal with a kind of runaway orphan, or whatever it is that's technically going on with Akira. 

Yusuke shrugs. "I mean, he lived with your uncle and cousin for five years. It's not like he _never_ saw you."

"He stayed in Inaba?" Yu asks. "But--I mean, he can't have. There's no way that would have worked out." Dojima would never have been okay with that.

"Oh, right," Yusuke says vaguely. "I forgot you knew so early that his parents had died."

" _You_ knew about..." Yu hesitates. "Of course you did. It seems like you guys have been pretty close all that time."

"He told me," Yusuke agrees. 

"Then maybe you can tell me how he ended up staying in Inaba for five years," Yu says. "When I'm pretty sure my uncle was going to report him to protective services after school finished. I just don't know what would have made him change his--"

"Because," Yusuke interrupts. "You don't do that to family."

Yu stares at him for a second. "Family," he repeats.

"Family," Yusuke agrees. "I know that you haven't been through a lot of the things yet that _made_ you all a family. The end of the year, chasing Adachi, all of the things we just talked about." He leans forward, gesticulating as he speaks. "But for Akira, you're always going to be like a--" He stops. For a second. Then he picks up again. "You're always going to be his brother."

Yu gives himself a couple seconds. Akira is a kid that he likes a lot. He's a weird kid, sure, but he's--

(Yu thinks about Akira coming to him last night, a little embarrassed and asking if he could sleep close to him. He thinks about sharing a room with Akira for six months now, fighting over who keeps leaving their socks on the floor, whose turn it is to run the vacuum, the little things that just add up)

(He thinks about Margaret talking to him just a few minutes ago, coming to him about the relationship between her sister and someone who will become, or could be, or maybe _is_ \--a brother to him)

"I think I get it," Yu says. "I'm not sure..." He hesitates. Lets it sink in a little bit more that the kid he'd thought would be out of his life forever at the end of the year isn't going any time soon. 

Realizes that he's glad to hear he won't be.

"Thanks," he says to Yusuke. "For telling me."

"You're good at being a brother," Yusuke says. "I thought that you should probably know."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note: There will probably not be a new Forearmed chapter next week. That is either going to be because I'll be posting the what-if-Forearmed-was-set-in-Inaba oneshot I've been planning on doing for the one year anniversary of this series, OR because work is nuts at the end of the year, and as much as I love this series, and as much as it is my stress relief, I just might not have time. We will see! Hoping for the first one :p
> 
> (Also, next PQ chapter should have all of the group date cafe, which I know many people have been looking forward to :D)


	22. Persona Q - Part 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before we start, I just want to say that if you're reading this and haven't played PQ, I highly recommend looking up videos of the second labyrinth (and it's ending, specifically). There's a bunch of different ways it can play out, and as far as I can tell all of them are hilarious. I laughed the entire time I was playing through it, and then going back to check some stuff for this chapter it was just as funny as I remembered. A+ good times :p

_Day 3_

_Morning_

-//-

The third day in the fake Yasogami starts a little bit less chaotically than the day before had. Yu takes charge of getting everyone up and moving and ready to meet in front of the labyrinth, which Akira is grateful for because, honestly? _Mornings_.

They're the worst.

(And it's almost funny--in Tokyo, when he has the Phantom Thieves to worry about and a million things to keep track of, he is perfectly capable of getting up early and herding the rest of the team to wherever they need to be)

(But here in Inaba? _Yu is here and Akira is sleeping in_ )

So Yu is the one that prods everyone awake, announces that they're going into the labyrinth at 9:30 whether everyone's ready or not, and turns them loose to do whatever they need to do to be ready.

Akira is one of the last ones up and awake, despite Morgana's best efforts and obvious exasperation at his stubborn determination to stay buried in his sleeping bag. By the time he's finally awake and sitting up, it's after nine and almost everyone has left the gym to shower or eat or whatever. 

He's used to getting ready quickly in the morning, because before meeting Morgana (who is a _very_ effective alarm clock, whether Akira wants him to be or not), he'd had a habit of hitting snooze over and over again and then rolling out of bed with just _barely_ enough time to do everything that needs to be done. So today he manages to grab his stuff, run for the showers, get clean in record time, and book it up to the second floor where the food is, all within the half hour he has. He's running back toward the classrooms and the new labyrinth with half a sandwich in his mouth when he runs into Rei.

She jumps back, obviously startled, and Akira comes very close to choking on his breakfast.

(She's going to die, Akira thinks as he looks at her)

( _She's not going to die_ , he reminds himself, because he has to believe they can change things and save her)

"Sorry," he says, when he's kind of composed himself a little. "I wasn't watching where I was going. Were you heading this way, or--"

"I was looking for you," Rei says. "I wanted to..." She trails off, twisting her fingers together nervously. "I wanted to talk to you about the... about the things you said yesterday."

"Oh," Akira says. "About what I, um... what I remembered?"

She nods. There's a nervous, awkward pause between the two of them, and Akira isn't quite sure what to say. Rei obviously wants to say something specific, but she's struggling to get the words out.

Finally, she says, "I think I want to come with everyone today. Please? If that's okay."

"You do?" Akira asks. "Even knowing what... might happen?"

Rei doesn't exactly look happy about it. "Well," she says. "I..." Her eyes slide away from his face, clearly uncomfortable with this entire conversation. "Zen's going to be there, I know he'll keep me safe. And I want to help! Everyone else is helping, I... I want to help, too."

"That's really brave, Rei," Akira tells her. "It seriously is, but--"

"I want to come with," Rei says, while looking like she doesn't want to go anywhere near the labyrinths ever again.

"Well--" Akira hesitates, torn because he _remembers_ how it had felt to hear that she had died, and he doesn't want to ever go through that again. He barely knows her, but she's still a part of the group, she's still one of the people that they're trying to get back home safely. But then on the other hand, she knows the risks. She knows that she might die here, and she's _still_ choosing to come with them. He can't, and shouldn't be, the one to make that decision for her. "Okay," he says. "But if you change your mind..."

"I..." She shakes her head. "I won't. I don't think."

"It's okay if you do," he says. "But as long as you're sure that you want to come with us, we'll be happy to have you."

She gives him a nervous smile, says, "I'm going to go find Zen," then bolts off before Akira can say a word.

He watches her go, thinking hard for a second, and then turns around and goes back up the way he'd just come, where the food is. He'll be late for Yu's 9:30 meet-in-front-of-the-labyrinth deadline, but there's something he suddenly wants to check up on, and with everyone else heading for the meeting spot, it'll give him some space to have the conversation he's planning in relative privacy.

When he'd been up there before, the only other people still lingering over the food had been Kanji and Chie, which Akira figures will probably be as good a place to start with finding out what he wants to know as anywhere else.

They're still there when Akira gets back, Kanji rushing through his food and clearly running even later than Akira, and Chie lingering over her own meal and still looking only half awake. 

"Forget something?" Kanji asks when Akira heads back toward them.

"Not exactly," Akira says. "I had a question, and since you guys have lived in Inaba longer than basically anyone else, I figured you might have the answer." He hesitates, then adds, "Well, Yukiko too, but I don't actually know where she is right now."

"Back by the labyrinth," Chie says at once. "Which is where we're supposed to be, you know."

"I know," Akira agrees. "But I didn't want to ask this around everyone else." He sits down, facing the two of them. "I just ran into Rei, and I started thinking about her and Zen and how they're kind of..." He hesitates. "I wanted to ask if either of you ever seen anyone like them around in Inaba?"

"No," Kanji says with a shrug. "Don't think so, anyway."

"It's just that they'd stick out," Akira says. "If they really _are_ students at Yasogami, that would mean they'd live somewhere around Inaba. And people would remember a couple of people that looked like them, wouldn't they?"

"I guess so," Chie says. "What are you saying, that you _don't_ think they're from our school?"

"Why else would they be wearing the uniform?" Kanji asks.

"I don't know," Akira admits. "But they're definitely not from _my_ time, because I don't know them." He would have remembered, if either of them had been at Yasogami with him last year. "So I thought maybe they might be from yours, since it's not like I was paying attention to who was going to the high school back then."

"Nope," Chie says. "I've never seen them before. I can ask Yukiko too, but I think she would've mentioned it already if she knew them."

"Maybe they're from some other time then," Kanji says. "Why not, right?"

"I guess that's a good point," Akira says. "But it's just..." he trails off, shakes his head and smiles. "I don't know. Just a weird thought I had when I was talking to Rei a little earlier. I guess I'm just--overthinking it. Probably."

"Probably," Chie agrees. "Anyway, we're already like ten minutes late, should we head to the labyrinth?"

Akira takes a second to shake himself out of his thoughts, then nods. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, let's go."

(Only, where _had_ Rei and Zen come from?)

-//-

_Day 3_

_Morning_

-//-

Yu hadn't really expected everyone to show up on time at 9:30, but he's a _little_ bit disappointed to find only about half of them there on time. Makoto--the last to arrive before the deadline, coming in at 9:28--looks around and then makes a beeline for Yu.

"Is everyone else already inside?" Makoto asks, sounding surprised to see the space around the labyrinth so empty.

"Apparently a lot of them are running late," Yu says. "I wasn't really expecting _everyone_ here on time, but..."

He trails off, and Makoto nods knowingly. "I'm student council president at Shujin," she tells him. "I understand how hard it is to coordinate a group like this."

They're only a couple minutes late right now," Yu tells her. "So I think we can still give them a little bit more time." And since there's nothing they can do for the moment other than wait, he changes the subject. "I guess that if you're here, that mean you've decided to come into the labyrinth with us?" he asks.

Makoto gives it a second, apparently still not _completely_ convinced that she's making the right choice, then nods, "Yes," she says slowly. "I don't think this is something I can sit out. I don't know much about all this yet. Not compared to everyone else. But if you're all willing to let me come with, and learn--"

"Of course," Yu says, interrupting her before the tight worry around her eyes can get any worse. "Listen, I know... this isn't exactly the best way for you to get a Persona. Normally it's a little bit less, uh..."

"Insane?" Makoto suggests, and Yu has to smile.

"No," he says. "I don't think that's the right word, exactly." The TV World is familiar enough to him and his friends by now that it doesn't necessarily seem as crazy as it must to Makoto, who is new to it all. But yes, _objectively_ , most of the things that happen around Persona are a little bit insane. "But at least normally you can at least go home at the end of the day," he tells Makoto. "You don't have to just... keep going."

"I had enough time to rest yesterday," Makoto assures him. "I'll be fine today."

"Good," Yu says. "I'm glad to hear that." Yu, on the other hand, could _really_ use an hour to himself to think through some of what's been happening lately.

The sound of thundering footsteps running up toward them interrupts the conversation, and Yu looks back over his shoulder to see Akira, Chie, and Kanji rushing toward them. 

"Are we not the last ones?" Akira asks, panting slightly and looking around. "I thought we were definitely going to be the last."

"Not the last at all," Yu says. "Apparently we're having some collective issues with getting started on time."

The three of them at least have the grace to look collectively ashamed at this.

And in fact it takes less than ten minutes for even the last few stragglers to show up, and as soon as they're all there, a quiet falls over the group that makes it clear they're focused and ready to go. Looking around at everyone, Yu can't help thinking that they might be a strange group of teenagers (plus one twelve year old, a cat, and... well, Teddie), but they know how to pay attention when something is important.

"Everyone be careful today," Yu says. "I assume this labyrinth is going to have tougher Shadows than the ones from the You in Wonderland display, so just--everyone be careful, okay?"

"I think we're still going to keep going with a main group of five," Akira (teenage Akira) says. "The same way we did yesterday. So if you're fighting and you feel tired or hurt, just let one of us know and we can swap you out with someone new."

"Right," Yu agrees, a little surprised despite himself (still) at how Akira had just jumped in with that. He _knows_ , intellectually, that Akira is the leader of the Phantom Thieves and apparently used to taking charge with his friends, but for Yu it's just honestly going to take a little more time. He rallies, trying to make this sound natural. "There's plenty of us here, plenty of people to trade out with."

"We'll start scanning Shadows as soon as you guys are close enough to get a read on them," Futaba volunteers, jumping into the conversation too.. "So hopefully we'll know how strong the Shadows are before too long."

Rise adds a bright grin and an enthusiastic nod to this, and Yu spares a second to think about how weirdly helpful it is to have two navigators on their side, before they head into the new labyrinth.

Yu pauses, just for a second, before they head in. He's been a little nervous ever since he found out yesterday that the next labyrinth is actually in his classroom, in the room that just so happens to where they'd set up their group date café. The last labyrinth had been wonderland themed, and for some reason Yu has a bad feeling about what this new one is going to be like. Then the dizzying transition between the school and the labyrinth levels out into something pink and pastel-ish, complete with cupids and rings and hearts, and he knows that this is not going to be fun.

Someone behind him--Ryuji, maybe--laughs and then gives a quieter grunt of pain.

(Sure enough, when Yu turns around, he sees Ann pulling back from elbowing Ryuji in the side)

(He decides not to say anything about this)

"So I guess it's themed around a group date," Akira--the older one--says. "That's, uh..." He looks vaguely uncomfortable. "Something we probably should have seen coming, actually."

"I still don't get what you would even _do_ on a group date," smaller Akira complains, even as the group starts moving. 

"I guess it's pretty much the same thing you'd do on a regular date," Yukiko says thoughtfully. "Only... in a group."

"Don't you know?" Ryuji asks. "It's your class doing it, right?"

"Well," Yukiko says. "Yes, but it was mostly Yosuke's idea. I'm really not sure what he thought was going to happen."

"Thanks, Yukiko!" Yosuke calls from the other side of the group.

"But," small Akira presses. "What do you do on a _normal_ date?"

The conversation is briefly interrupted at this point as they turn a corner and run smack into a Shadow, but as the few people up and fighting on the front lines--Yu, the older Akira, Makoto, Naoto, and Zen and Rei together--work through the Shadows, the conversation picks up again.

"You've never been on a date?" Yu hears Ann ask small Akira.

"I'm _twelve_ ," he says defensively. "No one goes on dates when they're _twelve_."

Yu glances sideways at Ann and Akira, just for a second, which is more than enough time to see how his entire posture has changed to a kind of ducked down pose of closed off embarrassment. 

Then he turns his attention back to the fight in front of him, which happens to give him a pretty good view of the older Akira looking almost exactly as embarrassed as his younger self does. He's doing a better job of hiding it, and he's helped by the fact that he's in close to constant movement because of the Shadows they're still fighting, but Yu catches glimpses of it, just here and there. Maybe that's why, after the Shadows are gone, Yu turns to him and asks, "Have _you_ ever been on a date?"

"I--" he sees the answer immediately, in how thrown Akira is in the split second before he manages to compose himself. "You can't just _ask_ someone that."

And that obviously fools absolutely no one because Ryuji says, "Seriously, Joker, have you never been on a date before?"

"I mean..." he shifts awkwardly from one foot to the other. "I've been _asked_ before, but... I don't know, I guess I'm waiting for... the right person?" Even behind his mask, he's starting to visibly turn red. "Can we just... I don't know, can we keep going?"

"Yeah," Yu says. "Yeah, we probably should."

They start moving again, but of course it's not as easy as that to distract the rest of the group from the fact that the leader of the Phantom Thieves has, in fact, never had a girlfriend. Yu would have felt bad about this, except that on the couple times he glances back at Akira, he doesn't look all that annoyed--what might have been embarrassing for him at twelve has apparently turned into something to joke about with friends by the time he's in high school.

"Maybe we should set Joker up on a date," Ann says after a few minutes of letting the conversation going around in circles. "I mean, as long as we're here. The setting's right, isn't it?" She gestures around them at the decoration.

"That's a great idea!" Teddie says enthusiastically. "Maybe we could _all_ pair up on dates?"

"Wait," Akira says, ignoring Teddie completely. He laughs, and gestures around at the group. "Panther, there's _no way_ that would work. I mean, look at who's here."

"What's wrong with who's here?" Yukiko asks.

"Uh," Akira says. "This is one of those questions, with no right answer, isn't it?"

"I wouldn't mind hearing an answer, actually," Ann says. "What's wrong with the girls here?"

"I didn't mean it like that," Akira says quickly.

"How _did_ you mean it?"

"Well half the group are people I grew up with that I _know_ are five years older than me," he says. "Even if we're all kind of... temporarily the same age. And I think Zen might actually murder me if I tried _anything_ with Rei, and Oracle is off the table because we're staying together and that makes her basically like a foster sister."

"I wouldn't date you anyway," Futaba says cheerfully.

"What about me or Queen?" Ann asks. "Or Haru?"

Yosuke, walking next to Yu, lets out a low whistle. "He is definitely right," he says under his breath. "That is _not_ a question with a good answer."

"Well," Akira says. "We're friends, right? It'd be weird."

"Hmm," Ann says, and for just a second she sounds like she _might_ be offended--then she laughs, and says, "But seriously, you _should_ try dating. It's fun."

He laughs. "Maybe with the right person," he says.

Luckily for Akira, the conversation doesn't get any further before Rise interrupts with the announcement that the door they're standing in front of is locked.

"Only," Rise continues, her voice disembodied but clear even though she's standing outside the labyrinth with Futaba. "I don't think there's any keyhole or any other way to unlock them. So I'm not sure what you need to do to--"

"WELCOME. STRAY LAMBS."

"Oh look," Futaba's voice, drier than RIse's, cuts in. "The doors are talking."

And as odd as it seems, that _is_ where the odd, slightly mechanical voice seems to be coming from. The group crowds in close, the earlier conversation about Akira's romantic history (or lack thereof) apparently forgotten in the face of this new distraction.

"HERE YOU MAY ANSWER QUESTIONS TO FIND YOUR DESTINED PARTNER," the mechanical voice continues.

"Destined partner?" Yukiko repeats. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"A romantic partner," Yusuke muses. "It would have to be something like that, in a place like this."

Rei gives an excited little gasp, looking suddenly less worried than she has since they first entered the labyrinth this morning. "Zen!" she says, in a voice that is clearly meant to be quiet, but thanks to its sheer enthusiasm is audible to everyone. "Zen, did you hear that?"

Zen makes a low, thoughtful noise, like a hum. "I... do not think I understand," he admits.

" _Zen_."

"So let me get this straight," Yu says, to the group generally. "We have to--or one of us has to, I guess--answer these questions, and then...?" He trails off, definitely unsure of what the point would even be of answering them all.

"QUESTION ONE," the voice says, completely ignoring the whole conversation. In front of the group, between them and the doors, a multiple choice question with two possible answers pops up. "YOU MAY CHOOSE TO ANSWER, OR YOU MAY CHOOSE NOT TO."

Makoto reads it out loud, her tone the audible equivalent of someone picking up something disgusting and holding it at arm's length between thumb and forefinger. "Does a difference of age or sex matter as long as there is love?" she reads. "Yes it matters, or no it doesn't matter at all."

"What kind of a question is _that_ , anyway?" Kanji mutters. "I mean--why do they want to know what we think about--that kind of stuff, anyway?"

"Who's supposed to answer it?" Yukiko asks.

"I suppose we'd just have to nominate one person to do it," Naoto says. "I'm not sure what the point of all this is, but it might break something if we have multiple people answer."

"It's so cute!" Rise's voice cuts in. "We get to find out who somebody _li-ikes_." She draws this last word out into two syllables, breaking into a sing song voice.

"It's not cute at _all_ ," younger Akira says, looking like he is just completely _done_ with talking about romance.

"It's a safer way of getting through here than fighting Shadows, anyway," Morgana points out.

"I don't know how it could figure out who our _destined partner_ is supposed to be anyway," small Akira says with a less than happy looking shrug. "It doesn't know anything about any of us."

"That's true, actually," Yusuke says. "Whoever set this up can't know anything about our lives in the real world, so whatever partner it comes up with would have to be somebody here."

" _That's even better_ ," Rise says, sounding like all her birthdays have come at once. "Yu, you should do it!"

Yu would really rather not.

"It is _not_ better," small Akira insists. "Anyway, it's a stupid question."

"It is not," Rise says.

"It _is_ ," he insists. "I man, of _course_ that stuff matters, like... you're not going to just fall in love with someone if you're not even attracted to them, ri--"

"ANSWER," the mechanical voice says. "ACCEPTED."

The whole group goes completely silent.

The older Akira is the one that gets it first, while all the rest of them are distracted by the doors suddenly unlocking and opening for them. "Well," he says. "I... guess we know who has to answer all the questions now?"

His younger self looks confused for a second, and then immediately horrified. " _No_ ," he says. "Come on, that's not fair at _all_!"

-//-

_Day 3_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Akira honestly had not meant to answer that first question. He'd just been complaining, because he'd spent most of the morning being teased (and watching older him be teased) for the fact that apparently neither of them has ever been on a date, and he hadn't realized that _complaining_ about the question would count as _answering_ the question.

(And actually, who even _cares_ if he's been on dates, or is going to be on dates, or... or whatever? He doesn't care that apparently it's not going to be something that happens any time in the next few years, because he's not interested in that at all yet, but...)

(Well, _apparently_ it's something that matters to other people)

And it's only gotten worse as they go deeper into the labyrinth, and keep running into doors with more questions, and the questions get more and more specific. He doesn't even know what he's supposed to say to answer them most of the time, and it's so much _harder_ because everyone's watching him.

"It honestly doesn't matter what you say," Yu tells him at one point, when they stop for a break at the top of one of the labyrinth's staircases. "We don't know what the point of all these questions is, but at least it's unlocking the doors and getting us deeper into the labyrinth. Whatever partner it eventually comes up with _honestly_ isn't going to matter."

"Yeah," Akira says glumly. " _You_ can say that, because it's not you picking the answers. Nobody's gonna make fun of _you_ because a dumb labyrinth decided to pair you up with someone that's either your friend from the future that you don't even know yet, or else someone that's _your_ friends, and then either way they're going to be like five years older than you!" He takes a deep breath before continuing. " _And_ you're not going to apparently forget all about this and then have to watch it all over again in high school and be embarrassed a second time."

He's been thinking about this _a lot_.

"Okay," Yu says. "Honestly, Akira, I think that you're overthinking this way more than you need to be, but if you're reallyworried you're going to be teased, I'll do what I can to keep anyone else from making a big deal about it, okay?"

Akira hesitates, because he does kind of feel like he's being a baby about all this, but at the same time he'd kind of sort of really appreciate it if Yu could help him. "Thanks," he says at last.

"Of course," Yu says, and he says it like it's so... like it's just so _obvious_ that he's going to look out for Akira and help him when he needs it, that it goes a long way toward making up for the whole stupid destined partner thing.

(A couple days ago, he'd still firmly believed that Yu would hate him forever if he found out that he's the Trickster)

(He's never been so happy to be wrong)

"Can I ask you something?" Yu asks.

Akira shrugs. 

"Even if this whole destined partner thing is just some nonsense from the labyrinth--"

"It _definitely_ is," Akira says. "There's no 'if.'"

"Okay, okay," Yu says with a small smile. "So even though it's not real, _is_ there anyone that you think you might...?"

"Might what?" Akira asks, after the silence has stretched on for a couple of seconds.

"Anyone you like?"

If it was anyone other than Yu asking, Akira would have assumed he was just being made fun of again. But because it _is_ Yu, he's more willing to assume that he's just genuinely asking the question.

"No," Akira tells him. "I have other stuff to worry about. Like the TV World and things like that."

"Okay," Yu says. "Sure, makes sense."

"Yeah," Akira says, relaxing a little. "Yeah, it does."

"But..."

Akira shoots him a suspicious look. "But what?" he asks.

"I was just thinking," Yu says. "You're, uh--well, you're getting close to the age where that kind of thing might start to interest you."

This, of course, starts alarm bells going off in Akira's head immediately. "Yu," he says quickly. "I _have_ had, uh... you know. The talk." His dad had explained... well, the _basics_ , anyway, before he'd died. It had been awkward enough then when it was just the two of them, Akira does _not_ want to go into any more detail here and now with everyone else only a few steps away.

"What?" Yu stares for a second, then his eyes go wide in sudden realization. " _No_ , that is absolutely not what's happening here."

"Then what _is_ happening here?" Akira asks.

"I just meant..." Yu takes a deep breath. "If there was a girl that you liked, it would... I don't know. It would be okay to like her, and... it would be okay to talk about it. It would be okay--" Yu hesitates for a second. "It would be okay to _like_ her, even if it feels like people are just making jokes about it."

He says it in a way that makes it sound like he has someone specific in mind, but Akira honestly can't figure out who he might be thinking about. 

"But there's no one I _do_ like," Akira tells him. "I don't even know that many girls?" Yu's watching him like he's expecting something more, so Akira tries to figure out what the heck he's even hinting at. "I mean, Nanako, but she's like... I don't know, she's kind of like a little sister, and she's _six_ , and just--" He makes a face. "Just no. And I know the girls at school, but most of them, uh..." Well, the best thing about school right now is that the bullying had pretty much stopped after they'd rescued Daiki from the TV World, but he's still only just starting to get friendly with his classmates. "Oh," he adds. "And there's Lavenza. But--"

He hesitates, no obvious end to the sentence springing to mind. Lavenza's not a kid like Nanako is, and she's more than just a passing acquaintance like the girls at school. But...

His face is warm, so he ducks away and wishes he had a mask that covered more of it, like some of the other Phantom Thieves have. "Can we talk about something else?" he mutters.

"Sure," Yu says. "Sorry, I didn't mean to make this weird."

"You made it _super_ weird," Akira tells him, and Yu laughs.

"Alright, alright," he says, holding his hands up. "Then I'm sorry I made it worse. Are you ready to get going, though?"

"Very, very ready," Akira says, and he's relived when the group wraps up their break and gets moving down to the next floor of the labyrinth. The relief doesn't last very long, because they run into another door with another question almost immediately, and he's left squirming as he tries to figure out what the right answer is supposed to be, and _everything is awkward he hates this labyrinth so much_.

But at least Yu is looking out for him now, and more than once he redirects the conversation when it starts to get close to teasing again. Akira can tell that no one actually means it to be _mean_ , but--

(But he's still twelve, and there is nothing in the whole world that's as embarrassing as the fact that all these teenagers are going to know about his _destined partner_ or whatever, and he's just--he's happy that Yu's looking out for him)

They get to the end of the labyrinth at last, and Akira actually pumps his fist into the air and cheers when the mechanical voice announces that this is the last question. Yeah, sure, whatever happens next is going to be weird but at least it'll be _over_.

"THE LAST QUESTION," the voice announces. "IS THIS. YOU MAY CHOOSE TO ANSWER, OR YOU MAY CHOOSE NOT TO."

Akira knows the drill by now, and he's ready for the next question when it materializes against the last door. He reads it in silence, bracing for whatever the question might be. So far he's been asked where he might want to date, what kinds of foods he likes, all kinds of apparently random things.

_How long will you wait for the one you love?_ he reads, and then lets his eyes slide down to the choices. _I wouldn't wait,_ or _I'd wait for a while,_ or _I would wait forever_.

There's no real reason that he has to give an honest answer, Akira knows. He can say whatever he wants, game the system, and end up with someone random as his so-called partner of destiny. Only he knows, deep down in his gut, is that the only thing worse than answering honestly and finding out who the labyrinth thinks is his partner, would be to make things up and end up with someone completely random.

So he thinks about it, and he knows his answer. "I'd wait forever," he tells the door. And he doesn't elaborate any further than that out loud (because Rei has already started making _oh that's so cute_ noises behind him, and he can feel his face starting to heat up for about the five thousandth time today). But the thing is, if you found someone you loved, why _wouldn't_ you wait for them forever? Why would you _ever_ want to give up on them?

There's a _ding_ , and the mechanical voice speaks up again. "YOU HAVE CHOSEN AN ANSWER," it announces. "AND BY YOUR OWN WILL, YOU HAVE COME TO THE END OF THE QUESTIONING. IT IS TIME NOW TO ANNOUNCE YOUR DESTINED PARTNER."

There's an actual drumroll, and a _spotlight_ , and Akira braces for whoever it's going to be. It's suddenly very hard to make eye contact with anyone, but he finds his older self in the crowd--the only person it's safe to look at right now, because that's the only person who _definitely_ gets how awful this whole situation is--and has one of those moments where he totally understands what's going on behind that still sometimes-unfamiliar face. Apparently it doesn't matter if you're twelve or sixteen, there's just nothing about this situation that isn't weird.

(And it's so monumentally unfair that he's going to have to do this all over again in five years)

(Honestly he's starting to think it might be worth the amnesia after this is all over just so he won't spend all of middle school dreading it)

"YOUR DESTINED PERSON IS THIS INDIVIDUAL," the mechanical voice announces, and suddenly there's someone at Akira's side, someone that hadn't been there before. He stares, and feels--honestly, he feels a sudden sense of happy _relief_ come crashing over him as he realizes that this has somehow turned out so much less bad than he'd thought it would.

"Oh," says Lavenza, a noise of surprise more than anything else, and then suddenly the floor opens up below them, and they're _falling_.

-//-

_Day 3_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Akira watches his younger self disappear through the floor with Lavenza and thinks--

_Lavenza?_

He'd been ready for just about anything else, but he'd assumed that whoever the labyrinth picked would be... well, someone _in the labyrinth_. He's already mentally rehearsing apology speeches to whichever of his friends or Yu's that the labyrinth voice is going to decide would make a god destined partner, and trying to figure out what he's even going to say to his younger self to help him get past what really is an unfair and awkward situation. 

And then the labyrinth picked Lavenza.

Akira's honestly never spent much time thinking about what he wants from a potential partner in the future. There _have_ been people that asked him out in the past, but he's never had a girlfriend, never gone out with anyone, and he's not even sure why. There's just a deep down feeling that none of those people that had asked him were... _right_.

(And what does right _mean_ , really?)

(Someone that knows him, _really_ knows him, and someone he knows too. Someone that understands the important parts of him, not just as Akira but as the Trickster, too)

Nanako used to tease him about Lavenza being his girlfriend, he remembers. Futaba had picked up on it too, when she first heard the name, and Akira has honestly kind of just ignored all of that because that's the kind of thing that sisters are supposed to do, even if they're unofficial or temporary or whatever weirdness is going on with him and the two of them. But...

In the second before the floor opens up, he sees the look of relief on his younger self's face, the expression that says _I didn't know how I wanted this to go, but now that you're here I'm glad it ended with you._

(How long will you wait for the one you love?)

(It might as well have asked how far will you go to find her, how hard will you fight to get her back, the answer's always going to be the same-- _as long and as far and as hard as I need to_ )

He hadn't been able to see any of this when he was twelve, but from the outside looking in--

It's different.

And he feels, suddenly and sharply, the need to _get home already_ , to find her, to see not the Lavenza from his childhood, but the older one that's hurt and trapped somewhere in Mementos.

-//-

Outside the labyrinth, Futaba sits with her chin on her hands, as next to her Rise freaks and reaches out with her Persona to try and figure out where small Akira and Lavenza have gone. Futaba, on the other hand, is _fully_ focused on the older Akira, though, unable to tear her attention away even though she knows that really, she should be helping Rise.

"Hey," Rise says at last, when she finally noticed that the only one who hasn't said or done anything since small Akira and Lavenza disappeared through the floor is his older self. "What's up with Joker?"

"Um," Futaba says slowly. "Well I'm not completely sure but I _think_ he might have just realized that he loves Lavenza."

Rise stops what she's doing, and turns to look at Futaba. "Wait," she says. "I've seen them together here. I mean--I've seen small Akira and Lavenza. You're telling me that he looked at her like _that--_ "

(Futaba remembers the way small Akira's face had lit up when he first realized that Lavenza was trapped in here with them, and understands what Rise means when she says 'like that')

"...and he didn't realize until he was sixteen that he likes her?" Rise finishes. 

"Guess not," Futaba says.

"Boys," Rise says, with a little sigh and a pitying shake of her head. 

-//-

It's not that weird, is it? To be completely oblivious to something like this, and not be _able_ to see it until you see it from the outside.

Because this isn't the Lavenza from his time. This is the version of her that exists, or had existed, five years ago when they were still fighting in the TV World, and not Mementos or Palaces. And when he sees the younger him and the younger her, lit up by a spotlight and with the words _destined partner_ still ringing in everyone's ears, he feels an intense desire to see her again in his time. 

Some of the best days of his life had been in Inaba with Lavenza. Not just in the TV World--anywhere in Inaba. Doing anything, or nothing at all, but knowing that it would always be exciting and special in a way that's different from anyone else he's ever met. No wonder none of the people that have ever asked him out in the past could live up to that.

"Joker," Yusuke says, and he realizes that he's completely zoned out for... he doesn't know how long. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," Akira says, and it's a lie but this is Yusuke, so he's sure will recognize it and understand anyway.

"Oracle and Rise say they're working on finding a way down to where they disappeared," Yusuke says, after a second or two of hesitation. "We're looking around from this side."

"Yeah," Akira says. "Right. Good point, we should... figure out where they went."

"You seem a lot less worried than I would have expected," Makoto says from behind them, and Akira thinks that yeah, okay, he _really_ shouldn't have spaced out like that while there's so many people still hanging around and probably listening in.

"It'll be fine," he says. "Younger me's with Lavenza, and I don't think anyone else here has ever seen her fight?" Not even Yusuke has, since by the time he'd gotten a Persona she'd settled into a role of advising and guiding, not full on fighting herself. But Akira _has_ seen her fight, during his first ever trip into the TV World when she'd taken on his Shadow alone. He's rarely seen her fight since then, but he knows--and he _had_ known, even back when he was twelve--that she can handle whatever's coming.

"Is she strong?" Makoto asks.

"Yeah," Akira says. "I mean--let's put it this way. I'm more worried about all of us together running into something dangerous than I am about just the two of them."

Makoto blinks, obviously taken aback, but nods uncertainly after a second. "Okay," she says. "Well that's--good, I think."

"On the other hand," Yusuke says. "I'm sure he can find a way to get into plenty of trouble while he's away from the rest of the group."

" _That's_ probably true," Akira says, as anxiety suddenly spikes through him. "That's... yeah, we should definitely go find them." He frowns. "Is this how it feels for other people being around me all the time?" he asks.

"Pretty much," Yusuke says, with a smile he's obviously trying to bite back. "But we're used to it."

-//-

_Day 3_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Akira falls in a heap with Lavenza, landing on something softer than he's expecting, but still not soft enough to keep it from hurting. He grunts in pain as all the wind is knocked out of him, and tries to roll over onto his back.

Something tugs at his hand, stopping him, and he looks over to see what it is. Lavenza--her expression concerned and cautious--is on the ground next to him, and her hand is stuck to his.

... _literally_ , stuck. It's not exactly painful, but when he tries to pull away he realizes that he can't.

"Um," he says, and stares at their two hands together.

"Well this is unexpected," Lavenza says, looking thoughtfully at the place where they're joined.

"I was _not_ planning on this," Akira tells her quickly. 

"You never are," she says, without trying to hide her smile. "And yet, somehow, here we are."

"I'm really sorry," Akira says.

"Don't be sorry," she says. "Let's just see where we are, and how to get back."

They stand--carefully, because of the whole... hand situation--and take in their new surroundings. It looks a little bit like a meadow, Akira thinks, with bright green grass and a few flowery trees. A path stretches out ahead of them, and at the far end of it is what looks like a church.

"IT SEEMS YOU HAVE REACHED YOUR DESTINATION," the mechanical voice says, and Akira jumps a little. Before, it had sounded like it was coming from the doors, but now it just seems like it's coming from thin air. "THIS SEEMS TO BE A PATH WHERE LOVERS WHO HAVE MET THEIR DESTINED PARTNER DISCUSS THEIR LOVE FOR EACH OTHER."

There's a brief pause.

"Trickster?" Lavenza says. "Can you... explain any of this?"

"Uh," he says. "I would really rather not?" But she _looks_ at him and so he does anyway, telling her as quickly as possible about the questions and how he accidentally answered the first one and got locked into answering all the rest. "But I don't really think it's like..." he fidgets, and wishes they weren't stuck holding hands. "It's not like the questions actually mean anything, so probably neither does this?" Who _knows_ how any of this works. "I'm really sorry," he says. "I know this is weird."

"It's..." she shakes her head, and he thinks there's a smile. "Let's see where the path goes," she tells him, and she seems... honestly, she doesn't seen nearly as upset as Akira would have expected. "This is a strange place," she tells him. "But I was starting to feel tired of waiting around outside." She looks over at him, trying (he thinks) to seem stern, and not quite managing. "You have... shown me that it can be fun to be in places like this. If the circumstances are right."

"I guess it's kind of like in the TV World," Akira agrees, feeling a little emboldened by how calm _she_ seems. "And that _is_ fun, you're right. And we've never run into anything we can't handle there, or anything--" mostly, he knows, because she's crazy powerful, and also good at keeping him away from places that are still too strong for him to handle alone. "So probably we won't have any problem getting out of here, either."

"That's true," she says. "But I think there's something dangerous waiting at the end of this path."

"Oh," Akira says, surprised for a second. Then he shrugs, and--because he's walking toward it with Lavenza--he grins. "Well, should we go find out what it is?"

"Or we could stay away," she says. "And wait for the others to find us."

Akira thinks about this. Then shakes his head. "No," Akira says. "I want to know what it is."

She laughs and they start forward, moving carefully because... well, because their hands are still glued together, and they're still getting used to it. As they move slowly down the path, Akira can't stop himself from noticing how... generally romantic the whole area looks. It's kind of the colors, and the flowers everywhere, and by the time they get about halfway down the path and find something waiting for them there, Akira already has a bad feeling about it even before the mechanical voice speaks up again.

"UP AHEAD," it says. "THEY SEE A BRIDE AND GROOM'S JOYOUS COMMEMORATIVE PHOTOGRAPH OF LOVE. THEY CONFER BETWEEN THEMSELVES WHETHER TO LOOK AT IT, OR IGNORE IT."

"Nope," Akira says, pointing his eyes immediately upward. "Nope, nope, nope, whatever it is, I don't want to know."

"It probably isn't as bad--oh!" Lavenza cuts herself off from whatever she'd been about to say, and _laughs_. "I was going to say that it can't be as bad as what you're expecting," she tells him. "But actually, it probably _is_ worse than whatever you think it is."

And of course when she puts it like that, Akira _has_ to see what it is, so he looks down immediately at the canvas.

"Oh," he says. "It--um... yeah, you're right. It really _is_ worse than I was expecting."

In front of them is a portrait, set up on an easel so that it's actually slightly taller than either of them, of a bride and groom dressed for a wedding day. The style would have looked pretty tacky all by itself, but it's even _worse_ because the bride has Lavenza's face and the groom has Akira's.

"Um," he says, after both of them have stared at it in absolute silence for a little while. "Can we kind of take a couple steps backward, for a second?"

She looks at him questioningly, but doesn't argue as they take two or three steps back. Akira waits until they're definitely at a safe distance before using his not-glued-to-Lavenza hand to pull off his mask and call his Persona. He has less of them here than he's used to in the TV World, just Arsene and one more and that's _it_ , but luckily the second Persona that he has with him right now is one that can use _agi_.

They watch the painting burn to ashes in complete silence, and then Lavenza says thoughtfully, "You know, it was only a fake."

"Yeah," Akira says. "But there's about fifteen people somewhere upstairs that can _never, ever_ see it."

Lavenza considers this, and then nods. "Should we keep going?" she asks.

They do, and this time they manage to reach the church without anything else horrible happening. Akira stops in front of the door and says, "I bet that voice is going to have something to say about--"

"THE LONG AWAITED MOMENT HAS COME."

"There it is."

"THE BRIDE AND GROOM ARE FINALLY ABOUT TO ENTER. THE LAST MOMENT OF HESITATION HAS ARRIVED BEFORE YOU ARE TO BE WED."

"Uh," Akira says. " _Wed_? Wait a seco--"

"THROUGH YOUR OWN FREE WILL, YOU DECIDE TO VOW YOUR ETERNAL LOVE TO EACH OTHER."

"That voice really _is_ getting to be annoying," Lavenza says. "I think I'm starting to hope that whatever it is on the other side that feels so powerful is connected to it."

"How come?" Akira asks.

"Because I think that I would really like to fight it," Lavenza says.

"NOW," the voice intones. "OPEN THE DOOR TOGETHER."

They look at each other. Akira sees Lavenza's determined expression, and feels a smile growing across his own face. Whatever's going to happen next, he doesn't think it's going to go at all the way the voice is expecting it will. 

"Hey," he says. "Lavenza?"

"Yes?"

"If I had to end up here with anyone," he says. "I'm, um... I'm glad it was with you."

His face is red all over again as he says it, but she nods. "This is one of the more interesting kinds of trouble that you've brought to me, Trickster," she tells him. "Now should we go silence that voice?"

"Yes please," Akira says, and they open the door together.

In the end, they never find the source for the mechanical voice that's haunted Akira throughout the labyrinth, and annoyed Lavenza so much at the end. Maybe it's somewhere else, maybe it had never been anything _but_ a voice, never had a body they can fight. But what they _do_ find inside is a strong and angry Shadow, a kind of priest riding a coffin _(for some reason?)_ who rants at them about weddings and funerals in the thirty seconds or so before Akira and Lavenza--

(mostly Lavenza)

(...almost entirely Lavenza)

\--take him down.

That works to unstick their hands, at least, and by the time the rest of the group has tracked them down and comes barging into the church, Akira's feeling like maybe the whole thing hadn't gone that badly after all.

-//-

_Day 3_

_Evening_

-//-

Yusuke makes a point of looking for the younger Akira after everyone's back from the labyrinth that evening.

(Which means _after_ the rest of them had managed to find and catch up to Akira and Lavenza, _after_ they'd found the toy ring hidden at the bottom of the labyrinth, _after_ the sight of it had made Rei completely freak out, and _after_ they'd all gone back to the Velvet Room to watch another one of the locks come off the doors inside)

It's late by now, or at least it's late as far as anyone can tell. The same mid-afternoon sun shines outside the school windows, but none of their phones have stopped working, and Yusuke's shows that it should be a little after 7:30 PM. Definitely too late to go looking for whichever classroom has the next labyrinth, but too early for any of them to head to bed. A few of the others are downstairs looking at festival displays and trying out some of the games, trying to cheer Rei up after the labyrinth had upset her so much, but Yusuke had wanted to look in on Akira.

He knows that there aren't a lot of people here that the younger Akira feels close to at this point in his life. Yu, obviously, and Lavenza. But he'd been avoiding the Investigation Team before they all got stuck here, because he'd been so afraid of anyone finding out he was the Trickster, and he still hasn't met most of the Phantom Thieves. That leaves Yusuke as one of the few people that had been his friend then and is still his friend now, and he's tried to at least make sure his friend isn't left completely alone.

"Are you doing alright?" he asks, when he finds Akira sitting alone in one of the classrooms, looking lost in thought as he stares at nothing.

"Huh?" Akira snaps out of it with almost comical abruptness, then focuses on Yusuke. "Oh, you mean the labyrinth? Yeah, I'm--fine, just thinking about stuff."

"What about?" Yusuke asks, as he sits down nearby.

Akira shrugs. "Just about how I think it would have been pretty weird if the labyrinth had decided anyone else was my destined partner or whatever," he says. "But it was Lavenza, and she's my friend and--" He grins. "It still _was_ pretty weird, I guess, but I don't think she was upset? So it wasn't too bad in the end. Maybe even kind of fun."

"I'm glad to hear it," Yusuke says.

"And that labyrinths done now," Akira says cheerfully. "So I'm hoping now we can all stop talking about whether I should be dating someone. And if the _next_ labyrinth has any kind of weird questions we have to answer to get through, someone else can do it."

"That seems fair," Yusuke agrees. "And I'm glad you're okay."

"Mm-hmm," Akira says. "I'm good. And not to change the subject or anything--"

Even though that's obviously exactly what he's trying to do.

"But what about _you_?" 

Well, it's probably fair for Akira to be asking about other people's relationships after everyone else had spent the day getting an up close and personal look at his so-called destined partner. "I also do not have a girlfriend," Yusuke assures him.

Akira laughs, and it's one of those moments that reminds Yusuke of just how much his friend has changed in five years. There are times in the labyrinth, when they're both fighting Shadows, both calling the same Persona, when the resemblance between them seems impossible to ignore. But then there are times like this, when Akira's grin lights up his face with trouble and excitement that he hasn't yet learned to try and hide, and it hits Yusuke how much Akira's going to have to grow up. "No," Akira says. "I meant--are you okay?"

"Am I...?"

"Are you okay?" Akira repeats. "I've been kind of wondering about it since you got here, and at first I thought..." He seems to be trying to think of the right words, sorting carefully through his options before he says anything out loud. "I thought maybe you just changed, in five years? Because you've been really quiet, and you look sad, a lot of the time. But I think the older me is worried about you too. I keep seeing him looking at you. And your Persona's not Goemon anymore, and..." He looks at Yusuke, concern leaking through his earlier good mood. "And are you okay?"

He's been noticing things, Yusuke realizes. More than he would have expected. "I didn't think you were paying that much attention," Yusuke says. He'd thought that he was doing a relatively good job at keeping his thoughts to himself and off his face, but apparently not.

"You're my best friend from five years in the future," Akira says. "Why wouldn't I be paying attention? And that's _not_ an answer."

Yusuke nods, slowly, considering what to say. And then he decides to explain, because... honestly, maybe he does want to talk about it.

(He knows why Akira thinks he's been worried. It's been less than a week since they stole Madarame's Treasure, and Yusuke still has not had time to process how that feels and what it's going to mean)

(The distraction of a new emergency to deal with does not suddenly make it easier to handle)

"You know what the Phantom Thieves do," he says eventually. "Stealing Treasure. Changing hearts."

"Yeah," Akira says.

"Two days before we came here," Yusuke says. "We changed my sensei's heart. And we needed to do it. He'd done--awful things. But he's the man that raised me, and I wasn't exactly planning on having to deal with all this right after." He sighs, and lets himself slump a little as the worry that's been eating away at the back of his mind ever since they got here starts to trickle out. "We were waiting for Sensei to admit to what he'd done," he tells the now attentive Akira. "So that we'd know that it had worked. But before that could happen, we were brought here. And so I'm still... waiting. To see what's going to happen to him."

He sort of feels bad, sitting here and telling Akira about all this. This version is just a kid, wide eyed without his glasses, young enough to let everyone see it when he'd been embarrassed in the labyrinth. Maybe it's not right to put all these worries onto him. "We don't have to talk about it," he says. "I know that there's enough going on--"

"Are you happy that you changed his heart?" Akira interrupts.

...on the other hand, maybe he should have know better than to think that even a twelve year old Akira wouldn't be able to handle this. Or that he wouldn't want to. 

"I don't know," Yusuke says. "He did things that were wrong. He thought things that were wrong." He hesitates, then admits, "I hope it helped him. He did things that--that are wrong. He needs to make up for what he did, but also..." Some of this has taken a while to figure out. He hasn't had a lot of time to himself since all this started with the labyrinths, but it's always just on the edge of his mind, waiting for a quiet second so he can go back to dwelling on it. "Also," he finishes quietly. "I really want this to have helped him. He'll never be the person I used to think he was, but there's still a lot of room for him to be _better_."

Akira's quiet for a second. Then he says, "I think your sensei's a pretty bad person."

Yusuke winces. Akira, at this age, will have only met Madarame a couple of times, during the weeks that Yusuke visited Inaba with him over the summer. But Yusuke remembers those weeks vividly, and he's sure that it will be even fresher and more painful to Akira.

Akira continues. "But you seem, or... _seemed_? In my time, you always seem like you look up to him so much, even though he _is_ kind of a jerk."

Yusuke nods. "I don't think I really started to get any idea of what kind of person he is until about a year after we met, when I started to think he might be plagiarizing work."

"Right," Akira says. "I just mean... he's mean. And he definitely doesn't like me, and it sounds like there's some worse stuff he did too, but you like him anyway."

It's strange, to hear this reminder of what it had been like when Yusuke was in grade school, when he'd truly believed that Madarame was a great artist and a good person. Things have been increasingly complicated for a long time now, starting with Yusuke's first nervous, stomach-twisting revelation that his sensei _might be the kind of person that steals paintings_. But for Akira--this Akira--all of that is the future. The Yusuke that he knows still believes in Madarame.

Yusuke's thoughts must be clear on his face, because Akira gives him an apologetic smile. "I guess I'm glad that you can see what kind of a person he is now," he says. "But... I'm also glad that it doesn't stop you from caring what happens to him, and wanting him to get better? I think that makes you a really good person, Yusuke. And I hope that changing his heart does help him, somehow."

Yusuke smiles at him, just a little. "I never really had friends before we met," he says. "Not _real_ friends, just... sort of people I knew from school, things like that. But you were a good first friend to have."

Akira's smile is wide. "I'm looking forward to being friends with you for a long time," he says. "And I'm _really_ looking forward to being a Phantom Thief, and helping you change your sensei's heart."

Yusuke nods, and takes this in the spirit in which it is meant, and decides not to tell Akira that he won't actually be able to help with that last part as much as he wants to because of the alarm levels in Madarame's Palace.

He'll find out about all that eventually, there's no reason to ruin the moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas! I spent my day writing this and also FINALLY finishing Royal, and just... *mind explosion noises* what an ending. 
> 
> And having FINALLY finished the game, I'm... actually kind of toying with the idea of bringing some of the Royal stuff into this fic? I know I've been saying I wouldn't, but honestly? I can kind of see how it would work out and I'm _very_ interested in the idea of Maruki just dropping into the Thieves' lives for the first time after Christmas and catching them totally unprepared. 
> 
> (Also anyone that wants to have a nine-months-behind-the-times conversation in the comments about What Even The Heck Was Going On In Royal would be a good person xD)


	23. Persona Q - Part 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So a lot of commenters have been asking if the younger Akira can be called something else, so that it's a little clearer what's going on in scenes where both Akiras are present.
> 
> I took a stab at that in one potentially confusing scene near the end, let me know if it's working?
> 
> (Also.... happy early chapter? I don't have work tomorrow so _technically_ it's basically the weekend, this can count as this week's chapter, right? xD)

_Day 3_

_Evening_

-//-

Akira's next attempt to try and figure out where Zen and Rei had come from is to ask Yukiko if _she's_ ever seen or heard of either of them. She hasn't either, the same as Kanji and Chie. So after that Akira's just starting to wonder whether he should ask Naoto whether she has any ideas from a detective's perspective, or whether he's just blowing this _completely_ out of proportion, when Makoto comes up to him.

"I heard you're trying to get some information about Zen and Rei," she says, without any kind of preamble.

"I am," he admits. He wonders if Yukiko had told her. "Why? _You_ don't know anything about them, do you?"

Considering that they're both in Yasogami uniforms, it hasn't even occurred to him to talk to anyone other than the few people that have lived in Inaba for all their lives. 

"I don't," Makoto says. "But I _was_ curious to know why you've been asking about them."

"Oh." Akira shrugs. "I don't know, I guess it just doesn't make sense that the two of them would end up here even though they don't have a Persona, they didn't know anything _about_ Persona, and none of us have ever even heard of them before. They're not connected to anything, and I mean... even you and Haru go to Shujin, you were with me when it all started, so having you guys here makes sense. With those two--it doesn't."

"So you're suspicious?" Makoto asks.

"Not suspicious," Akira says. "That's not it, exactly. "But I think that maybe if we can figure out why they're here, figure out something so that them showing up _does_ make sense, then it might give us an idea of why this is happening in the first place." He sighs and leans back so that he's resting against the closest wall with his arms crossed. "But no one's ever heard of either of them, so I don't know what to try next. And they could have been from Yasogami even five or ten years before the Investigation Team went there, so..."

"Their uniforms look pretty much the same as everyone else's," Makoto points out.

"Yeah," Akira says. "But I have no idea how long the school has been using a the same uniforms? Probably a long time, it's not exactly the fastest school in the world when it comes to updating things."

Makoto nods and thinks about this for a couple seconds. Then she says, "There should still be pictures of previous classes around here somewhere. Either in the student council room or the library or the staff room."

"From more than a few years back, though?" Akira asks.

"I know that Shujin keeps student records going back to when it first opened," Makoto says. "And if this school is as slow at updating things as you said, they'd probably do the same thing."

"They probably would," Akira says, brightening. "Thanks. That's a really good idea." Apparently having a student council president on their side is more helpful than he would have expected, because there's no way anyone else would have thought of that.

"We can start checking places to see if we can find it," Makoto says, and the two of them head down to the staff room to start their search.

They run into Haru and Marie on their way downstairs, and then Naoto just outside the staff room. Marie seems not at all interested in helping them try to figure out where Zen and Rei had come from, but Haru is eager to help, and Naoto admits that she's been wondering herself about where they might have come from.

"It just seems strange," Haru says. "We know how to escape, and as long as we can get through two more labyrinths and get the last two locks off the doors in the Velvet Room, we'll be able to get home again. But unless we can find a lot more information in those labyrinths than in the first two, just getting out isn't going to answer any of the questions we have."

"So does that mean you're both willing to help us look into it?" Akira asks, looking at both Naoto and Haru as he asks. "Because I'm going to be honest, I have no idea where to start with finding the student records Makoto's talking about."

"The more people we have looking, the faster we'll find out if they really did go here," Haru says. 

"And I'd like to know more about them myself," Naoto agrees. She checks the time on her watch, and says, "It's still early enough that we should be able to get through a good amount of it today."

They split up to look for the records, with Makoto heading to the student council room (and waving off Haru's just-this-side-of-innocent _of course you would volunteer for the student council room_ comment), Naoto going to the library, and Akira and Haru walking to the staff room together.

"I figured we'd need two people looking in here," Akira explains as he leads Haru to the right room and pushes the door open. "It's always been kind of a disaster area, there's too many teachers and not enough space."

"I see what you mean," Haru says, surveying the cluttered services and packed together desks. 

"Yeah..." He rubs the side of his head, a little awkwardly. "I don't really think the records will be in here, because they barely have enough room for the stuff they actually need every day, but it's worth a shot. And worst case scenario that just means Makoto or Naoto will find them in one of the other rooms."

They start searching, and Akira is surprised at how much there really is here. He knows that this isn't really Yasogami, just a copy that's been made in some weird corner of the metaverse. He'd been sort of afraid that the copy wouldn't be good enough or detailed enough to reproduce something as specific and unlikely to be looked at as the paperwork stacked up in the staff room, but here it all is. Akira takes one end and Haru starts at the other, and they work toward the middle.

"Oh!" Haru says, after about five minutes of searching.

"Did you find it?" Akira asks, straightening up from where he's flipping through a stack of third year exams.

"No," Haru says. Her face is vaguely pink. "But apparently whichever teacher sits over here keeps a stash of... inappropriate magazines at his desk." She gingerly lays a gradebook on top of the desk, and moves onto the next one. "Have you found anything yet?"

"Well I found the gradebook for Yu's class," Akira says. "Which is interesting but not actually helpful." He definitely would have nosed through it if he didn't already know that Yu and his friends are all going to pass and graduate high school without any problems.

(Well-- _mostly_ without any problems. The only time Akira's actually seen Yu come close to a breakdown had been in his third year when he was taking college entrance exams)

(And that _includes_ all the fights against extra-dimensional beings trying to end the world)

"Oh geeze," he says, something in the gradebook catching his eye as he goes to close it. "I forgot they had Kashiwagi for their homeroom teacher at the end of the year."

She'd replaced a teacher called Moroka after he was killed, but the part Akira usually remembers is the 'Moroka was killed' part of the story, and now who replaced him.

"You know her?" Haru asks.

"She's the teacher everyone hopes they _don't_ get," Akira explains. "Still teaches second year classes in our time." In the days before he was arrested, right at the end of the school year, that had been the thing everyone at school was talking about. Kashiwagi had been a new teacher in 2011, but by the time Akira got to Yasogami in 2015, she'd has an established reputation for creepily hitting on her male students. There had been a pervasive and not completely unbelievable rumor that she liked to arrange for the guys she thought were cute to be assigned to her class.

(...Akira kind of wonders whether _she_ has a Palace, but that's definitely not a problem to deal with right now)

"Are there good teachers at this school?" Haru asks tentatively, and Akira catches the look she gives to both Kashiwagi's desk and the one with the dirty magazines.

"Plenty of them," Akira assures her. "But they're the ones with the _boring_ desks, apparently." He sighs and moves on to the next desk, feeling weirdly nostalgic considering that this conversation had started by talking about a creepy teacher that nobody likes.

They haven't quite finished looking through everything when Makoto comes to collect them and announce that she'd found about fifteen years of student records in a cupboard in the student council room, if they'd like to come help look through them.

"Definitely," Akira says, and isn't all that upset to leave the staff room with all its familiar names behind.

The student council room at least is unfamiliar, since Akira is emphatically not the kind of person that joins student council, so it doesn't take all that long to shake off the lingering, weird nostalgia and focus on what they need to do now.

"We can probably discount anything from the last two years," Naoto says, as the four of them survey the binders Makoto has laid out across the wide table in the middle of the room. "Akira, you've already asked around about whether anyone here remembers seeing Zen or Rei at school, correct?"

"Right," he says. "I talked to Kanji and Chie this morning, and then Yukiko after we finished the labyrinth."

"So of course there is still the possibility that none of the three of them would have seen them around school," Naoto says. "But it's more likely that they attended in another year. Especially since we already know that time travel is possible here."

"What if they're from a time in the future, though?" Haru asks. "Or from _our_ time?"

"Then there's nothing we can do to find out more about them," Makoto says. "Since the school is an exact copy of how it looked in 2011, we're not going to get any records from the years after that. But we can at least look at what we _do_ have, and work from there."

"It looks like the earliest year we have is 1997," Akira says. "So if we want to check the years between then and 2009, that makes thirteen years."

"We'll all take one to start with and see how far we can get," Makoto says, reaching for a binder at random. "I doubt we'll finish today, but we can look into it more tomorrow."

"And I should be able to get some of it looked at while the rest of you are in the labyrinth," Haru adds. 

"You don't have to," Akira says. "I mean..." He hesitates, fully aware that not everyone would consider fighting Shadows in a labyrinth to be _fun_ , and maybe Haru falls into the group of people that would actually rather not go in.

(Somehow, he doesn't think so? It's the look in her eye when the rest of them talk about the labyrinths, and also something he can't quite explain but that he thinks _might_ be coming from their bond--all together, it tells him that maybe Haru would have rather been fighting with the rest of them)

"It's something to do," Haru says calmly, her tone giving absolutely nothing away. "And I don't mind, anyway. If Zen and Rei can't remember anything, maybe it will help them to know where they came from."

So everyone chooses a book at random, and start flipping through pages. At the front of each book are pages and pages of student pictures, a sea of faces in Yasogami uniforms. The back of each book has notes about students that went on to the next grade at the end of the year, or students that failed or withdrew from school.

(Akira's grateful that this is a copy of Yasogami from Yu's time, and that they won't find the student records from 2015--he's sure that there would have been a note in that one reading _Akira Kurusu, withdrew due to criminal charges_ , and he doesn't want to see that)

"We should probably also be noting students who didn't appear to be photographed," Naoto says thoughtfully as she pulls out a pad of paper. "There shouldn't be too many, and if we see a Zen or Rei listed there, it might be worth following up on that."

"Noted," Akira says.

But in the hour or so that follows, as the four of them come up with nothing. No recognizable faces appear, or at least no _relevantly_ recognizable faces. Akira's lived in Inaba for long enough that he does actually see plenty of people he knows, but none of them are Zen or Rei.

"Maybe we should stop here for the day," Makoto suggests eventually. "We're all getting tired."

"The faces are definitely starting to blur together a little," Akira admits.

"We made good progress, though," Haru says. "I think I can probably finish the rest of these tomorrow while you're all in the labyrinth."

"That would be great, if you're still willing to do that," Makoto says. 

"Of course," Haru says. "I might even be able to get Marie to help. She's always saying that she's bored just hanging around in the crafts room."

"Well either way," Akira says. "We'd really appreciate it." He stands up and adds, "I can help you carry the rest of these back to the craft room if you want, so you can look at them tomorrow."

Haru agrees, so the two of them say goodnight to Naoto and Makoto, and carry their armfuls of books across the school. Akira hasn't had much of a chance to talk to Haru since the first day they'd come here, and he's trying to figure out what the right thing would be to say when she speaks up.

"Akira," she says, not quite looking at him as they thread their way carefully through the crowds of cognitive students. "I was wondering if I could ask you if you would be willing to do something after we're back in the real world."

"I'm not sure I'll remember it even if you do ask," Akira says. "I mean, I'm working on a couple of ideas that I think might help, with the remembering? But I don't know for sure that they will, so... Whatever you're going to ask, I don't know if I'd be able to say yes."

"I understand that," Haru says. "Which is why I'm not asking for a favor, exactly. I just want to know if it's the kind of thing you might consider. For my peace of mind while we're still here."

"Okay," Akira says. "Then, sure. What's up?"

"I've been thinking about putting a request on the Phantom Thieves' website," Haru tells him, and Akira feels something start to twist nervously in his gut. He hasn't known Haru for long, really, and he still doesn't know her all that well. He knows that she's passionate about gardening, that she cares about the few people she's close to, and that she's enthusiastically interested in the Phantom Thieves. But he also knows that she never discusses her home life and rarely mentions her father, who seems to be her only living relative.

She knows now what the Phantom Thieves do and how they change hearts. The fact that she's even bringing it up to him tells him that there must be someone in her life that she thinks is distorted enough to be worth asking about.

"Whose heart were you going to ask us to steal?" he asks.

"I hadn't made up my mind," Haru says. "Because I'm not really sure whether it would... whether it would help more if I put my fiancé's name on the website, or my father's."

He looks over at her. She's still looking at the stack of books in her arms, using them as an excuse to keep her eyes away from him. 

"I didn't know you were engaged," Akira says. Why is she _engaged_? She's only a year older than he is. She's still in high school.

"My father arranged it," Haru explains. "He's looking to start getting into politics, and my fiancé has the kind of connections he wants."

"So he... set you up in an arranged marriage with someone it sounds like you don't actually like," Akira says. 

"Yes," Haru agrees.

"Oh," Akira says.

"Yes," Haru says, again. "He is controlling and self-obsessed, and occasionally he acts in ways that make me think that he..." she hesitates. "It's hard to put it into words. But sometimes I catch glimpses of behaviors that he seems to be trying hard to keep hidden from me. I'm concerned that if the marriage were to go through, he wouldn't have any reason to keep those impulses hidden. I don't think--"

She stops, falling silent and simultaneously freezing in her tracks. Akira stops a half second later, so that he can turn to look at her as she meets his eyes. "I was willing to do this," she says. "Because it would help my father, and because... I don't see any easy way out. But then I actually _met_ my fiancé, and I can't imagine spending a lifetime with him. So--so what I'm asking, I guess, is whether that's the kind of request that you all would have tried to do something about."

Akira frowns. "Haru," he says. "Listen, I know... I know that we haven't known each other all that long, and for most of that time I've been lying to you. But you're still a friend, and I'm not spending my lunches up on the roof with you and Makoto because I like having awkward conversations about hunting the Phantom Thieves."

She half smiles.

"If you put that story on the phan site," he tells her. "And if you ask for either your fiancé or your dad to have a chance of heart, then honestly it sounds like the kind of thing we'd probably want to check out no matter who posted it. But if you do it in a way so that I know it's from you, then it's _absolutely_ something we'll do something about. You're a friend, Haru."

"That makes me feel a lot better," she tells him. "I'm not sure if... after all this, when we get home and don't remember it, I don't know if I'll end up working up the nerve to post something on the website, but it's nice to at least know for right now that it would work."

"Not just if you put it on the website," Akira says. "Haru, if you ever tell me this again like you are now, after we're back in the real world, I'm pretty sure my first reaction would be to check and see if they show up on the metanav."

It's not the most reassuring thing in the world, he knows, because his ability to help Haru is still _really_ limited unless she either tells him what's going on, or posts something on the phan site. And there's no guarantee whatsoever that she's going to do either.

(He needs to figure out a way to remember this. He _really needs to remember_ )

But it's something, at least, and it seems to have a visibly reassuring effect on Haru, who relaxes slightly and smiles. "Thank you," she tells him. "I... don't know if there's anything else I can do to stop the wedding from happening."

( _He is going to figure out a way to remember)_

_-//-_

_Day 4_

_Lunchtime_

-//-

It takes Haru most of the next morning to get through the rest of the available school records.

She flips through page after page of student photographs, looking for any sign of either Zen or Rei, and comes up with nothing at all. Both of them have a distinctive look that she's positive she would recognize if their pictures had been in their records, and they're just not.

The list of students whose names appear in the records without a picture is also disappointingly short. The way that Haru eventually figures out that it _probably_ works is that the name of every incoming student is added to the books before classes start, and then pictures are taken shortly after the new school year. So the only students whose names appear without pictures are the ones who had registered and then--for whatever reason--not been able to attend classes.

Obviously this isn't something that happens very often, but Haru puts together a list of a little under two dozen students they don't have pictures for. None of them have the name Zen or Rei, but Marie--who has been paying attention and pretending very hard that she's not at all interested--points out that there's no reason to _assume_ Zen and Rei are real names.

"They don't remember anything," she points out (and Haru thinks she sounds just a _little_ bit bitter, on the subject of memory loss). "How do we know they're remembering their names right?"

"I think that's usually one of the things that amnesiac people _do_ remember, actually," Haru says. "And basic things, like language or general knowledge."

"Maybe not, when all this stuff gets involved," Marie says, waving a hand at generally everything. Haru understands this to mean that Marie is talking about the whole weird situation they've all found themselves in--Persona and Shadows and all that. "Maybe they _don't_ know who they are."

"Maybe not," Haru agrees, and turns her attention back to the list of names with renewed interest. 

The records list explanations for students that hadn't continued on to the next grade level, which is helpful. Haru is able to look up the names of the students they don't have pictures for, which is helpful. The most common reason for students to have enrolled at Yasogami but then not attended seems to be clerical errors. More than half of the nineteen students that hadn't ended up attending are listed as being enrolled at other schools. Haru assumes they had passed the entrance exam and then decided to go elsewhere--surely there are occasional cases where the wires would be crossed on that.

The rest of the students hadn't attended for a variety of reasons. A few had been forced to move due to vaguely listed family emergencies. One boy from the incoming class of 2007 had been arrested (Haru's mind flashes immediately to Akira), and a girl in 2000 had died. 

She lingers over this last entry for several minutes, reading the notes in the back of the book with a kind of morbid interest. Apparently the girl in question had been sick and in the hospital when she took the entrance exam, and whatever teacher or administrator had left these notes had been pessimistic that she would recover enough to ever actually attend classes. And, in the end, she'd been right. The last sentence just notes that the girl had missed the first month and a half of classes, then died during unsuccessful emergency surgery before the end of the first semester.

Haru feels a stab of pity, reading the notes. She can't imagine the kind of resiliency it must take just to complete high school entrance exams from a hospital bed. She can barely imagine the tenacity it would take to convince a school to make an allowance, and _let_ her take the exam from a hospital bed in the first place. She must have wanted this badly, and in the end...

Footsteps at the door interrupt her thoughts, and Haru looks up to see Lavenza standing in the doorway. 

"You need something?" Marie asks.

"I just came by to talk," Lavenza says. "There's not much that I need to be doing while everyone's in the labyrinth, so I wanted to come and talk for a while."

"Of course," Haru says.

"Why not?" Marie says. "Not like we're super busy here, either."

"Did you hear what the next labyrinth was themed around?" Haru asks. "The last I saw this morning was that they were all running around looking for it."

Lavenza nods. "It's in one of the third year classrooms," she says. "Class 3-4."

Haru frowns at this. "But there are only three classes in each year at this school. I've been looking at pictures and names for two days now, so I know that there are _definitely_ only three classrooms."

"This on _e does_ havea haunted theme," Lavenza admits. "I suppose the fact that the classroom isn't supposed to exist at all only adds to the atmosphere."

"It's a haunted house?" Haru asks, with interest.

"An evil spirit club," Lavenza says.

"I would love to see what that looks like," Haru says. 

"Probably better than the date thing they did yesterday," Marie says. "That sounded pretty awful."

"I heard about all that," Haru says, unable to hold back a laugh. "Poor Akira, honestly." And then she remembers that Lavenza had been dragged into it too, and bites her lip.

The younger girl--although whether she really _is_ younger is something that Haru is having a hard time puzzling out--doesn't look upset though. "It wasn't as bad as I think it sounds," she says. "And it seems like you're more interested in this new one anyway."

"I've always liked a good ghost story," Haru says. "Although honestly, I just wish--"

She stops short of admitting that she wants to be part of it all, the way everyone else is. She's here, now. And the longer she sits, and waits, and tries to do anything she can to make herself useful, the more she dislikes it. Why is she even here at all if she can't be with everyone else in the labyrinths? And if she's the only one here without a Persona--

Does that mean there's something wrong with her?

"Honestly what?" Lavenza asks, pressing gently.

"It doesn't matter," Haru says, and when Lavenza doesn't look _quite_ convinced, she adds, "Honestly, it's nothing to worry abo--"

"Listen," Marie says. "If you want to go in the labyrinth, just say so."

Haru turns slightly pink.

"I don't blame you," Marie adds. "Being stuck in here is boring. I'd try and get out of it if I could."

"I can't," Haru reminds her. "I don't have a Persona."

"But you undoubtedly have the potential for one," Lavenza tells her. 

"How can you tell?" Haru asks.

"The fact that you're here at all," Lavenza tells her. "And the fact that the Trickster does not surround himself with ordinary friends."

Akira, Haru remembers. That's what she calls Akira.

Lavenza smiles, something fierce and complicated in the expression, and Haru catches herself wondering what Lavenza had really thought of being pulled into the Group Date Cafe with Akira yesterday. "That tells me that you can do more than sit here and wait, if you choose," Lavenza says.

That last part resonates with Haru, more deeply than it probably should, and she catches herself drawing back a little at how close it comes to home. It's... the sitting and waiting here, not being able to help anyone else, looking through pictures that hadn't led to any answers. And it's what she's doing back in the real world too, sitting and waiting because what is she supposed to do about her father and her upcoming marriage? It's hoping desperately that someone will do something to save her, when she'd much rather be able to save herself, thank you. The Phantom Thieves are real, they really _can_ change hearts, and they're working on the side of good. Haru knows that now, but she hadn't before she came here, when all she'd had was hope that somehow they could do the impossible, to help her.

"What choice do I have?" she asks Lavenza. "I can't do what everyone else can."

Lavenza's smile shifts, away from the clear fondness that had been there when she was talking to Akira, and into something more directly reassuring. "Come with me," she tells Haru.

"Where to?" Haru asks.

"Into the labyrinth," Lavenza says.

"Are you allowed to just do that?" Marie asks.

"I don't think so," Lavenza says. "But this has been a strange year, and a _very_ strange few days, and... I don't think that I want to do only what I am allowed anymore." She lifts her gaze, meeting Haru's eyes. "Will you come with me, Haru?"

Haru thinks she can understand that wanting to not do only what she is allowed to do. She feels it herself, often, as a sort of constant ache somewhere inside her. She feels it inside herself _now_ , as a sharp pain of wanting. Lavenza is offering to take her to the labyrinth, and Haru understands that what she's really giving her is a chance to go looking for a Persona.

"I will come with you," she says, and follows Lavenza out of the room.

-//-

Marie watches them go, trying her best to feel bitter about losing her unofficial assistant.

She's not, though. Haru is one of those people that's just actually _nice_ , and Marie thinks it kind of sucks that she's seemed so sad since she got here. She'll like going off into the labyrinths with everyone else.

...but also it's going to be _unbelievably_ boring here now that Marie's all on her own.

"Well... whatever," Marie mutters. She heads over to where Haru has been sitting all morning, with the books full of pictures still spread out across a couple of desks. Marie starts stacking them up, getting them out of the way, only pausing when she gets to the one Haru had been looking at last. It's open to a page of handwritten notes on some dead girl called Niko.

"Weird thing to read about," Marie says, then closes the book and adds it to the pile.

-//-

_Day 4_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Lavenza elects to take Haru into the first labyrinth, the Wonderland themed one, because she's not sure how she would explain things to the two navigators outside the Evil Spirit Club display, and she's already had a chance to see the Group Date Cafe for herself. That leaves only Wonderland, and since it has the weakest Shadows of the three labyrinths they know about so far, Lavenza reasons that it's probably the safest place to take a person hoping to find their Persona.

"You don't have to do this for me, you know," Haru says as they enter the labyrinth.

"I don't," Lavenza agrees with a nod. "But I'm going to anyway."

"I don't want to try and talk you out of it," Haru says. Her voice is tentative, like she's worried that this is exactly what's going to happen anyway. "But you and Marie were talking about... how this isn't technically something that you're allowed to do?"

Lavenza sighs. "No," she agrees. "My role in all this is to guide and observe, along with some other things that--would take too long to explain, even if I had the right words to explain them. I am not supposed to involve myself directly like this."

"Then why are you?" Haru asks.

There are reasons, many reasons, and Lavenza has gone through them over and over again in her head as she sat alone in the nurse's office. She knows that when Margaret finds out about all this, she's going to be disappointed and exasperated. _You're going to end up like Elizabeth,_ she'll say. _Why do you want me to have to lose another sister?_

Lavenza had been hurt when Elizabeth left the Velvet Room, just like Margaret and even _Theo_ had been hurt. The three of them had gotten closer after she left, the remaining siblings. Lavenza _knows_ that Margaret will see this liberal interpretation of her duties as a sign that she's going down the same road as Elizabeth. It had already been uncomfortable enough, watching Margaret's face as she very intentionally _did not react_ to the story of what had happened in the Group Date Cafe.

(Lavenza is not sure if what is happening to her is actually the same. Elizabeth had left the Velvet Room out of a deep and powerful affection for a guest who had been... lost)

(But Lavenza now knows that _she_ is the one that is going to be lost, and her Trickster who will show no hesitation in searching for _her._ It's not the same thing at all, even if... even if she does feel confused by the way he's wormed his way into her life. He is not even supposed to know her yet. He certainly should not be her friend)

But the point is that she does have an explanation, a long one, ready for Margaret. She gives only part of it to Haru now.

"The first day I met Akira, he fell into the metaverse and awoke his Persona," she says.

Haru's expression is politely uncomprehending.

"I did everything I could think of to convince him to turn around and go home," Lavenza says. "He was not supposed to know anything about that world so soon. He was not supposed to have a Persona. I tried to send him away, and it made him more determined to stay." 

"That does sound like Akira," Haru says.

"I didn't know him then," Lavenza says. "And I certainly didn't know that awakening his Persona that day would help him to grow in the ways that he has. I _like_ the person that he is, and I don't know how much longer it would have taken him to get there without his Persona. It was a mistake to try and prevent him from getting a Persona. I don't want to repeat my mistake with someone else that seems just as ready for one of their own."

"So you really think I'm ready?" Haru asks.

They're entering the labyrinth by now, and Lavenza pauses for a moment before answering so that Haru can adjust to entering a new reality.

"Yes," she says at last. "For several reasons. Because you're here, and nothing happens so close to the Velvet Room without a reason. Because you want this more badly than you seem willing to admit. And because..." she looks up at Haru and smiles. "You have a mask already."

-//-

Haru has already decided that this is something that she desperately wants. Sitting in the crafts room and hearing Lavenza tell her that she could do more than sit behind and wait, that she could _choose for herself_ what she wants to do, in that moment she had decided.

And maybe her Persona had heard, or had recognized this new determination in her, because only steps into the labyrinth she already feels something hard settling over her face.

 _Reach out for your rebellion with both hands_ , says a voice that seems to come as much from her heart as from her head. _And forge a contract with me._

She will. Haru grabs her mask, knowing instinctively that this is the right thing to do. She takes hold of her mask, feeling simultaneously like she's taking hold of her own life for the first time, and she pulls.

Milady answers her call.

Haru very nearly cries.

-//-

There's no question of Haru actually joining the Phantom Thieves and Investigation Team in the new labyrinth on the same day that she's awakened her Persona. They leave almost immediately and Lavenza suggests to Haru that she go to get some rest in the quiet hours before everyone else gets back. Haru politely declines, and goes to help Marie.

Lavenza goes back to the nurse's office, and waits for the rest of the group to come back. Eventually they do, and several members of the combined team come looking for healing. One of them, she's not entirely surprised to see, is Akira. The one she still subconsciously thinks of as the _correct_ one, the younger Akira from the same time as her. 

He's stayed behind after everyone else has left, just to talk to her she thinks. There's nowhere really comfortable to sit in the nurse's office, only the examination table which Akira doesn't seem to like much. Instead he's cleared some counter space, and hoisted himself up onto it.

(Lavenza has never known him to do this before, climbing furniture to sit there, but she has noticed that Futaba does the same thing. She spends her days sitting outside the labyrinths, cross legged on top of a desk with Rise standing or sitting--like a normal person, in a chair--nearby)

(She wonders if either of them has noticed he's imitating her)

"So what did you find in this new labyrinth?" she asks him.

"Giant, haunted doll things," Akira says immediately, leaning slightly forward from his countertop perch. 

"Giant...?"

"They only pop up when it's dark," Akira says. "And they laugh in a really creepy way when they do it. Chie _really_ freaked out when she saw them. And Makoto, too."

"Did you?" she asks, fighting off a smile.

"No," Akira says. "I mean--at first, when we weren't expecting it, but it wasn't that bad."

"Did you have to fight any of them?" Lavenza asks.

"We had to run away from one of them," Akira says. "It was way too tough to try and fight."

"But you're saying all that... wasn't too bad," Lavenza repeats.

"I mean..." He shrugs. "No one died?"

"You should work on developing your sense of danger, Trickster," Lavenza tells him. "If I didn't already know you will, I'd be starting to doubt that you'll live to see sixteen."

He seems proud of this, Lavenza thinks, but it's hard to tell for sure because of how tired he looks. It's been a long few days for him and the others, she knows, and she only hopes that it will all be over soon.

"I _barely_ got hurt," he tells her.

"Barely?" Lavenza repeats skeptically, remembering his early claim that the new labyrinth 'hadn't been that bad.'

He rolls up the sleeve of his hoodie, to show her a place where he's been cut--actually fairly badly--along the back of his arm, between his shoulder and elbow. 

"That's not _barely_ ," Lavenza says, exasperated.

"It isn't as bad as it looks," Akira protests. He twists his arm so he can get a better look at it himself, and winces. "Or... actually that is pretty bad, maybe?"

"Here," Lavenza says, and takes his arm. Her job here is to keep everyone healed and ready to fight, and it's not difficult to wipe away the blood and close the wound. It scars when it heals, instead of vanishing cleanly like it would have in the labyrinth. This school is close to the metaverse, closer to that than it is to the real world. But it's not quite as close as the labyrinths, with its Shadows, where everyone can summon their Persona. If he'd had a _dia_ or _diarama_ cast on him there it would have healed without a scar, but here this is the best that even she can do.

"Thanks," Akira says, when she lets go of his arm.

"You should have taken care of it earlier," Lavenza says. "Before you came back here."

"It's not like it's the first time I've gotten hurt," Akira points out. 

Lavenza frowns at him. "You can ask for help while you're in the labyrinths," she says. "You're not working on your own in there. I know that's not what you're used to, especially since Yusuke went home at the end of the summer. But you're with a team _now_."

Akira listens to this, then nods. "I know," he says. "But I don't want them to think I'm too young to keep coming in with them. I want to be able to keep up."

"Everyone needs help sometimes," Lavenza tells him.

"Not you," Akira says.

"Sometimes," Lavenza says, and feels the increasingly familiar, tight pressure of remembering that she only has a few years before something terrible is going to happen to her.

His eyes search her face questioningly, but Lavenza doesn't elaborate. If they're all going to forget this anyway, there's no reason to talk about something that neither of them truly understands.

"Hey," a voice at the door interrupts. "Do you have a minute?"

She looks up and sees that the older Akira leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed. He looks tired too, Lavenza thinks. 

"Of course," she says out loud. "Did you need something?"

"I was just up in the Velvet Room and I ran into Marie," older Akira explains. "She said that you and Haru were up to something today, and I might want to know about it?"

"Is that how she phrased it?" Lavenza asks. "Up to something?"

"Pretty much," Akira says, and suddenly he's unable to hide a grin. "So what was it?"

"What were you doing?" the smaller Akira echoes. He'd twisted around so that he can see his older self more clearly, but now he looks back at Lavenza and it's not _fair_ , she thinks, for both of them to be looking at her expectantly like that. In the face of their twin looks of interest, she has no other choice but to explain.

"Haru has a Persona now," she tells them both, and enjoys their almost identical reactions of surprised excitement. The small one leans so far forward that he almost falls, and the older jerks forward from where he leans against the doorframe.

"How did that happen?" the older one asks.

"What Persona does she have?" the younger adds.

"Her Persona is Milady," Lavenza says. "I'm not sure how strong she is, but I would imagine that she's much like Haru--stronger than she looks." She doesn't know Haru well, but she doesn't think that someone who would walk so willingly--more than once--into a labyrinth full of Shadows without a Persona, would be someone that will fight.

(She'd seen Marie making something for her this afternoon to fight with, something large and sharp that Lavenza would not have expected would fit Haru well--but Marie has spent the last couple days with her, so Lavenza will live this part up to her)

"As for _how_ ," she says. "I took her into the labyrinth. I thought she could do it, and I was right."

"Wait," the younger Akira says. "You got _so mad_ at me when I went into the TV World and found Arsene. Why is it okay for Haru?"

"Because of what happened that day," Lavenza tells him. "Because of all the reasons you have shown me over the past few months." All the ways that _he_ has changed, since he'd gotten a Persona, and learned to fight and hide and _find trouble_. All the ways he's shown her that holding someone back from their Persona would be wrong. "And because I think that the more people around with a Persona, the better."

The younger one seems satisfied by this.

The older one gives her a look that implies he understands. She assumes he does, and sees that part of why she'd done this--beyond helping Haru, beyond adding a fighter to the ranks of people trying to get through the labyrinths, she knows that when he goes home, he will need more people around him with a Persona of their own.

She might have worried it was a selfish impulse, except that Haru had wanted it so badly too.

"Well," the older Akira says. "Thank you. And I should probably go talk to hre about..." He hesitates, and Lavenza watches his gaze land on where the younger Akira. More specifically on his arm, where the sleeve is still rolled up past the fresh scar tissue. "Is that new?" he asks.

"Um--" the younger Akira nods. "Yeah. Why?"

The older one answers by rolling up his own sleeve to show a more faded scar in the same place. "It's not exactly the only weird scar I've gotten since I started fighting Shadows, but I did kind of wonder where it came from."

"You 'kind of wondered'," Lavenza says. "About a scar that goes halfway up your arm that you don't remember getting."

"I'm obviously not paying that much attention," the younger one says, and since he had come in here saying that he'd 'barely gotten hurt,' this is not something Lavenza can argue with.

"It had already healed into a scar by the time I noticed it," the older one points out. There's an... odd smile on his face, something that makes Lavenza raise her eyebrows slightly. "And it's in a weird place. I think--I don't know, I think it was after the new year by the time I actually saw it." 

"Why are you so happy about this?" Lavenza asks him.

"I'm not happy," he says while his grin stretches.

"Liar."

He doesn't even try to deny this. "I'm just--I'm happy to know that I came out of all this with a scar." He pushes his sleeve back down and takes a couple steps back out into the hall. "Anyway, I should go see if I should find Haru and talk to her about her Persona."

"But--"

It's too late. He's gone before Lavenza can get the rest of the question out of her mouth, which does absolutely nothing to reassure Lavenza that whatever is going on in his head is _not_ somehow a terrible idea.

The younger Akira watches the empty doorway for several seconds in obviously confused silence, his face creased in deep concentration. Then he says " _Oh!_ " and his eyes go wide. "There is _no way_ that's going to work."

"What's not going to work?" Lavenza asks suspiciously.

"Um..." He looks sideways at her, seems to think about it for a second, and then shakes his head. He's smiling too, now. "I think I actually want to talk to--you know, to older me first. Just in case I'm wrong."

"You don't look like you think you're wrong," she tells him. "And if there's anyone that could figure out what's going on in your own head, it would have to be you."

"I just... want to go--" He slides off his countertop perch and points out the door. "I'll see you later, okay?"

"Okay," Lavenza says, but... quietly. 

When she's alone, having watched both of them run off, the only thought in her head is that it's much more... it's more _fun_ when she's in on the terrible ideas.

She stays where she is, thinking hard.

-//-

_Day 4_

_Evening_

-//-

Ann's not entirely sure how the conversation over dinner circles around to the idea of a middle of the night trip into the Evil Spirit Club, but somehow or other it does.

"Just saying," Ryuji says. "It might be fun. Like breaking into a haunted house in the middle of the night."

"That's a terrible idea!" Chie tells him, leaning across the crowded table where about half the group has gathered for dinner, and pointing her fork at him accusingly. "We are _not_ going in there in the middle of the night! It's bad enough during the day!"

"Are you scared?" Yosuke asks. "Because it's not like it's going to actually look any worse at night than during the-- _owww can you stop kicking me under the table?_ "

"It... might be best to keep our trips into that particular labyrinth confined to the daytime," Naoto says. "There's definitely something strange there, since that classroom isn't supposed to exist at all, and... maybe it actually would be safer during the day."

"But it's _always_ day here," kid Akira points out.

(Is Ann used to thee being two of them here yet?)

(No. No, she is not)

"The sun never goes down," Akira continues. "So technically it's always daytime, and so it's probably okay to go in whenever we want."

"But we'll _know_ it's the middle of the night," Chie says.

"Which is why it's cool!" Ryuji insists.

"Which is why it's _not_!" Chie counters.

Naoto clears her throat. "Regardless of whether we _want_ to go in," she says. "We were just in the labyrinth for most of the day. It would be better to wait until we've all rested before we go back in."

"I haven't been in yet," Haru says, half raising her hand. "I'd like to see it."

"And not all of us did a bunch of fighting," Kanji adds. "I wasn't up in front too much today, I'd be up for it."

Naoto starts to protest. "We can't go in without a navigato--"

"No problem," Futaba interrupts, flashing her a Cheshire grin. "I bet Rise'd be on board too, all _we_ have to do is sit outside in the hall."

While the rest of them go into a dark labyrinth in the middle of what _they all know_ is the middle of the night. "I don't think we should go in without everyone," she says slowly. "I mean--" Ryuji and Futaba are the only other Phantom Thieves at the table, and she looks at the two of them for support she's not sure she's going to get. "Look at how much trouble we _just_ had trying to get through a Palace when we were just down one person."

"You'd have Akira with you this time," Futaba says, jerking her head toward the twelve year old sitting at the table with them.

Ann opens her mouth, but can't think of anything to say--on the one hand, obviously a twelve year old Akira is not going to have the same experience as when he's sixteen, so she's pretty sure that's not going to help all that much. On the other hand, she doesn't want to just say that out loud because that's rude.

"We'll just go in a little way," Ryuji says. 

"Yeah, right," Ann says, crossing her arms.

"We won't even go looking for Shadows or anything," he insists. 

"So it would _just_ be to scare us," Chie cuts in.

"Well, sure," Ryuji says. "If you're scared."

Her eyes narrow and she stands up, slamming her palms onto the table. "I'm _not_ ," she insists. "I'll go in there right now!"

Oh no, Ann thinks.

And yet somehow, they end up at the labyrinth together only a few minutes later. It's not the full group, only about ten of them. And Futaba and Rise aren't coming in, of course, which means that it's a definitely smaller group that heads inside--Ann, Ryuji, Haru, Chie, Yosuke, Kanji, Naoto, and Akira. 

(The small one)

And at first, it's really not... _that_ bad. They stick close to the entrance, because not even Ryuji is dumb enough to go wandering deeper into the labyrinth without a full group, and spend about half an hour scaring the crap out of each other. It starts when Yosuke (accidentally, he swears) gets a little too close to Chie in the dark, who _shrieks_ like a banshee when she realizes someone standing behind her, which scares Yosuke, and sets Kanji off laughing.

After that it's all dumb ghost stories and jumping out from behind things. There aren't really any Shadows this close to the entrance, and the few times that one of them comes close, Futaba's able to warn them and they all get out in time to avoid a fight. It's a little bit frantic and more than a little bit stupid, but it's stupid in the way that sneaking into somewhere dangerous in the middle of the night is stupid, and by the end even Naoto and Chie--the most obviously scared of the group--seem like they're having _some_ fun. 

And then they hear the scream.

Yosuke's in the middle of telling a story he'd heard somewhere about a haunted school ( _"just like this one!"_ ), but he goes silent at that sound. 

"Uh," Ann says. "Everybody heard that, right?"

"Y-yeah," Chie says. "It... sounded like somebody screaming."

The scream comes again, and somehow everyone ends up a couple steps closer to each other. 

"Oracle?" Akira says. "Is... there anything out there?"

"I don't know," Futaba says at once. "I started scanning right away, but this place is the worst."

"It might be an FOE," Rise suggests.

"What if it's a person?" Kanji asks. "We have to go check it out."

"No way," Chie says, her voice rising in pitch. "There is no way it's a good idea to go out there with such a small group! And--and if it _is_ an FOE--"

"Or it could be someone that's hurt," Ryuji says.

"There's no one here to _get_ hurt," Naoto says. "Everyone else is back in the school."

"We ran into Zen and Rei for the first time in the labyrinth," Akira says. "How do we know there's _not_ more people here?"

"I'm gonna go check it out," Kanji says, and goes charging off away from the entrance before any of them can stop him. "You guys come with me or don't, but I'm going!"

"Hey!" Yosuke shouts. "Hey, Kanji, come back!"

But Kanji doesn't, so Yosuke goes running after him, and of course Ryuji does too because _Ryuji,_ and then Akira goes after them all and after that--well, after that it starts to feel less dangerous to stick together as a whole group so Ann runs too, and Chie and Naoto are right behind her.

"Try to stay away from anything dangerous," Futaba's voice says.

"Any idea where the screaming's coming fro--"

Futaba half shrieks a quick instruction to not turn left, and there's a minor pile-up as everyone swerves right at the next corner. They're going _way_ too deep into the labyrinth, and Ann's heart is pounding in her chest like it's ready to burst out of her. All the fun of sneaking around a little while ago is gone, burned away by fear. Running through the labyrinth now, through patches of darkness and occasional, flickering light, with only Futaba's frantic directions to keep them from running into more of those FOE doll things, Ann is starting to think that they might have been incredibly stupid to come here at all.

(And the screaming hasn't stopped--if anything, it's gotten worse. It seems to come from every direction at once, and Ann doesn't really think anymore that it had ever been anything other than the horrors lurking all over this place)

(But they've gotten so far in now, _too_ far, it feels like, to try and turn around)

"Guys!" Futaba shouts. "Look, out, I don't think the floor there is sa--"

It gives way suddenly, all at once, and although _most_ of the group is able to stop in time to avoid falling through, the few in front aren't quite able to manage it. Ann pulls up short, panting hard, as she watches Ryuji, Chie, and Akira go falling down to--to she doesn't _know_ where.

-//-

_Day 4_

_Midnight_

-//-

Akira lands on top of Ryuji but under Chie, which... honestly could have been better? He lies there for a second, too surprised to move, then moans and squirms out of the pile of limbs and stands up shakily. They're in a very dark room, with a locked door behind them and a heavy duty door on the opposite side of the room. The hole in the ceiling that they'd fallen through is very, very high overhead, and Akira's whole body aches just seeing how far they'd fallen.

Ryuji curses with enthusiastic creativity then asks, "You guys okay?"

"Yeah," Akira says, still looking upward. It's so dark and so far away that he can't be sure, but he thinks he can see faces overhead. "It's a good thing this isn't the real world though, or we would have been _really_ dead."

"Oh man," Ryuji says. "Oh _man_ , yeah, that is way up there." He gets to his feet and joins Akira in the little spot of light (or maybe slightly-less-dark-darkness) under the hole. "Hey!" he shouts, cupping his hands around his mouth. "Hey, you guys still up there?"

"Yeah!" Kanji hollers back down. "You guys okay down there?"

"We're fine!" Ryuji yells.

"We're okay!" Akira adds in confirmation, and then he remembers Chie. She hasn't said anything so far, so while Ryuji keeps shouting up at Kanji and the rest of them, Akira goes over to check and make sure that they actually _are_ all okay.

He finds Chie still on the ground, breathing shallowly, crouched with her arms around her knees. 

Akira lowers his voice, because probably this isn't something Ryuji needs to overhear, and asks, "Did you get hurt when you fell?"

He doesn't think she had. He thinks she's scared, because she hates ghosts and she doesn't like this labyrinth, and having the floor fall out from under all of them had for _sure_ not helped with that.

It takes Chie a second, but she pulls herself together. "No," she says. "I just--wasn't expecting that."

"I'm sorry," he says. "I know..." He hesitates. It feels... weird, to be the one having this conversation, and trying to help her feel better. It should have been Yu, right? He's the leader, he's the one that knows how to keep a team together. Akira's been hovering around the edges of the Investigation Team for what feels like forever now, and Yu is _good_ at being their leader.

Akira doesn't have a team. He has a friend in Yusuke and a...

...a whatever Lavenza is, to him.

(he does _not_ think about the Group Date labyrinth)

But Ryuji's busy and Chie's scared and no one else is down here, so Akira tries his best. "Well me and Ryuji have kind of been walking around in this room," he says. "And we haven't run into any of those scary doll things, at least. So maybe they can't get down here."

"Yeah?" Chie says. "Well--well I guess that's good."

"Yeah," Akira says. "So now we just have to figure out a way out of here before the rest of the team shows up, because--" He gives her a sheepish grin. "Because this is the _second_ time I've gotten in over my head because I was in a labyrinth when I wasn't supposed to be, and Yu is definitely not going to think it's funny if he finds out."

"When he finds out," Chie says. "He definitely will."

" _If_ he finds out," Akira repeats. "All we have to do is find a way out of here, and then just... never talk about it again?"

She stares at him for a second, her expression a little bit more visible now that Akira's eyes have had time to adjust to the darkness. Then she laughs, and stands up. It's a strained laugh, sure, but at least she's standing. "So does that mean you have an idea how to get back up there?"

Ryuji has apparently finished his shouted conversation with Kanji, because he picks this moment to walk back over to the other two. "No clue," he says. "But, uh, more bad news? Apparently Oracle and Rise can't reach down here, or something? Those guys can hear them up here, but uh..."

"We're on our own, it sounds like?" Chie says.

"Yeah," Ryuji admits.

The three of them look at each other. Akira takes a deep breath. "Okay," he says. "So... _good_ news, no ghosts down here."

"That's a plus," Ryuji says. 

(Both of them look kind of sideways at Chie)

"I'll be okay, guys," she says. "We just... have to get out of here."

"And there's these two doors we haven't looked at yet," Akira adds. "I don't know if that counts as more good news or not, but at least it's something to try?"

So they check out both doors. The first one is locked, and apparently needs some kind of keycard to get through. The second one, on the other side of the room, has a pair of pressure pads, one on either side, that need to be stood on before the door will open.

The problem with this is that Ryuji's the only one that actually weighs enough to trigger the pressure plate. Akira and Chie are both short enough and light enough that the plates won't even trigger. They're both close to being able to do it, they can tell because if either of them takes a running start and _jumps_ onto the plate, the extra momentum will trigger it for a split second. But then things even out, the pressure isn't enough, and the doors stay closed.

The three of them consult, and then go back to the hole and do some shouting up at the group up there. They just need something heavy enough to make the difference with either Akira or Chie to be able to trigger the pressure plate, and eventually Kanji drops down the folding chair he uses to fight with.

"Thanks!" Ryuji calls. "We'll get it back soon as we can!"

"I have something too," Haru says, her shout a little more hesitant. 

Akira assumes she means the axe Marie had given her this afternoon. Like everyone else, she'd brought her weapon in with her tonight, because... well, because they're not dumb enough to come in without weapons? It's probably the only other thing that any of them has with them with any real weight, but Akira's _kind_ of hoping they won't need that on top of Kanji's chair. There's not a lot of room here to duck an axe if it comes flying down at them.

"I think we're good," Ryuji says. "But thanks!"

"This had better work," Chie says, but quietly, so that only Akira and Ryuji will hear. 

"It'll work," Ryuji says.

"It has to," Akira says. "Or else Haru's going to throw her axe at us."

"Come on then," Ryuji says. "Let's give it a try."

And, luckily, it _does_ work. Kanji hits hard, he uses a heavy weapon, and it's enough to make the difference for both Akira and Chie. Either of them, with the extra weight, is heavy enough to trigger the second pressure plate. They try it with Ryuji on one plate and Akira on the other one, all three of them peering through the locked door as it slides open.

On the other side is a completely dark, absolutely pitch black room.

"Oh come _on_ ," Chie says, and even though she's obviously trying hard to make it sound like a joke, it... doesn't sound like a joke. It sounds like she's scared.

"I can go in," Akira says, and thinks he does a better job of making it sound casual. "You guys can stay here and keep the door open in case I need to run back or something."

"By yourself?" Chie asks doubtfully.

"I don't think we have any other choice," Akira says. "Two people have to stay here so the door stays open, right? One of them has to be Ryuji, because he's the only one heavy enough to trigger one of the pressure plates by himself, so... it might as well be me."

He's not going to make Chie do it, not when she hates this labyrinth so much.

"Are you sure?" Chie asks. "Like--really sure?"

There's no way to know for sure that there's anything in that room that will help them, but Akira is hoping there will be. And since the only other way out of here is... he isn't even sure what it would be, but it would _definitely_ involve Yu finding out about them all sneaking into the labyrinth in the middle of the night. Walking into a dark room in the middle of a haunted labyrinth is way less scary.

"I'll go," he says. "Here, we'll switch--you stand on the plate."

They maneuver so she's standing where he had been, and Akira moves carefully toward the door.

(...it's really, _really_ dark. And he thinks he can feel a chill coming out from through the open door)

"Listen," Ryuji says, and Akira's sort of grateful for the excuse to look back at him, instead of staring in through the open door. "If you need us for help or anything..."

"I'll scream really loud," Akira says, trying his best to smile.

"Don't you _dare_ ," Chie says. "It's bad enough in here already without you going around... shrieking like some kind of ghost."

"Okay, okay," he says. "I won't scream. But I'll... see you guys in a few minutes? I hope?"

Ryuji still looks like he wants to argue, and actually starts to say something before abruptly cutting off. Akira's almost positive that Ryuji doesn't really know what to do with him (like... in general--so far they've barely spent ten minutes together), and Akira thinks that's because Ryuji looks at him and sees... older him. And older him has more powerful Persona and is the actual leader of the Phantom Thieves, and Ryuji apparently doesn't know what to do with the fact that twelve year old Akira is just... in over his head and usually neck deep in trouble.

(How is he going to grow up to be the older version of himself that he's met here? _How?_ )

But at least right now it means that Ryuji doesn't actually try to stop him as he takes his first, slow steps into the room.

Instantly, he's surrounded by a darkness so deep and so complete that he almost feels like he's swimming through it. The chill that he'd felt standing outside the door is worse here, and he can hear... something, whispering, in the dark around him.

(maybe this place really is haunted)

(He doesn't believe in ghosts, right?)

(Suddenly he's not so sure, standing in the dark with the cold and the whispers all around him, it doesn't sound so crazy that ghosts would show up in a labyrinth already full of Shadows)

He keeps edging forward, not really sure where he's going but thinking that if he walks straight, at least he'll have a straight shot back to the door if he has to run. So he moves as quickly as he dares (so like... very slightly faster than molasses) for about ten or fifteen steps.

Which is when something pops up right in front of him, lit by a kind of inner glow that only makes it _more_ terrifying than if it had been in complete darkness. Akira, completely taken aback and already on edge, _screams_ in surprise and falls.

"I told you not to do that!" Chie shouts at him from the open door. "Akira, seriously, don't mess around!"

He's _not_ messing around. Right in this second he is as scared as he thinks he's ever been in his life, and he can feel his hands shaking against the cold floor as he tries to push himself back up to standing.

"Akira!"

She doesn't think he's scared, because he'd volunteered to come in here, and because the dolls hadn't scared him earlier in the day, when they were all together in a big group and there was light. It's completely different on his own in here. And Akira can't let him know that he _is_ scared, because... well, because no one else can do this. Ryuji needs to stay on the pressure plate, and Chie would be even more afraid than he is.

"Sorry!" he calls, and forces himself to smile so that she'll be able to hear a little bit of it in his voice, so that she'll think he's messing with her and not just actually, genuinely scared. "I couldn't resist!"

" _Try harder!_ "

Akira closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath. Then he stands up, staring hard at the creepy doll in front of him. It's not like he's being particularly brave about it, it's just... honestly, he's terrified to let this thing out of his sight even long enough to blink.

Which is stupid, because they've run into these things before, upstairs. They pop up when you get close, and if you're not watching where you're going and get into a fight, they hit hard, which is why he now has a scar on his arm that's apparently going to last all the way up through high school. But if you're careful, and move _around_ them, you're safe. This particular kind of FOE is stuck in one place, so he just has to not be stupid and walk into them.

...which would be a whole lot easier if he could see where he's going.

"There's more of those creepy doll things in here," he shouts back at Chie and Ryuji, even as he starts to sidle nervously past this one.

Chie makes a squawking noise of unhappy protest.

"So I'm going to keep looking but, uh..." Another one bursts upward just behind him, giggling in his ear, and Akira flinches and--just for a second--freezes with his eyes tight shut. "I'm going to be moving kind of slow," he finishes.

"If you walk into one of them, I'm coming in after you!" Ryuji yells.

" _Don't!"_ Akira and Chie shout at him at the same time. If Ryuji comes running in, there won't be any way to get the doors open again, other than maybe having someone jump down through the hole. That _really_ doesn't seem like a good idea, and Akira's having a hard time imagining how getting more people stuck down here is supposed to help anything.

As if he needed any _more_ reasons to be careful. Now he's worried that one wrong step will get him in a fight with a creepy doll and also send Ryuji running in after him. He just really, really needs to make sure he does this right.

So through the room he goes, weaving carefully around the dolls, tip-toeing through the empty space. And it's lucky that he _is_ going so slowly, because that's the only reason he feels the keycard on the floor as one shoe brushes over it. 

Akira crouches down and picks up the keycard, closing the fingers of his hand tightly around it. At least, he _assumes_ it's a keycard. With how dark it is in here, it could be basically anything. "I think I have something!" he calls back toward the door. "A keycard for the other door!" Bracing himself, he takes a couple steps back the way he'd come, to where he knows one of the creepy doll is waiting--it pops up again, slightly less terrifying this time since he knows it's coming, and from the dim, haunted light it generates, he studies the thing in his hand.

It _is_ a keycard. No identifying marks, or anything to show that it belongs to the door back in the room with Ryuji and Chie, but what else could it be for? Feeling a little more encouraged now that he has that, and since he's covering ground he's already seen (and where he knows the locations of all the creepy dolls), he moves faster. In less than half the time it had taken him to get out to the keycard, he's back with the other two, doubled over with his hands on his knees, shaking and breathing hard.

"I never, ever want to go back in there again," he tells them. 

Ryuji slaps a hand on his back. "You did great, man," he says. 

"You were kidding about that place being full of creepy dolls," Chie says. "Right?"

Akira shakes his head worlessly, and Chie's expression goes pale.

"Oh," she says. She steps quickly off the pressure plate, so that the door between them and the creepy doll room slams shut. "So should we try that keycard?"

-//-

Ryuji watches Akira run over to the opposite door, still a little too pale, still kind of shaking when he holds up the keycard to try it on the door.

Since the day Akira had come charging into Kamoshida's Palace with his superpowered OP Persona and his apparently endless depth of weird Shadow-related knowledge, he's figured that the now-leader of the Phantom Thieves had ended up so good at what he does in the metaverse because he's had years and years of practice.

But nope, apparently he's always been the kind of person crazy enough to walk face first into something like this. Ryuji's not sure that he would have done that, when he was twelve. This labyrinth doesn't bother him all that much now, as a sixteen year old and a Phantom Thief, but that other room had definitely raised the hairs on the back of his neck. He'd like to think that he'd have gone running in anyway, when he was the same age as this Akira, but--

He's not sure.

-//-

The keycard works on the first try. Akira jumps up, fist punching the air, and whoops so loudly that it starts off a round of cheers from the people waiting by the hole upstairs, who can't even see what's going on.

There's a set of stairs on the other side, which lead up and up and up until they get to a door that had been locked from the other side, and go charging through it to reunite with the rest of the group.

"Okay, great," Futaba says, and Akira is _so_ relieved to have a navigator's voice back in his ear. "Now do you think you guys can all keep yourself from charging off after ghost screams long enough for us to get you back in one piece?"

"Yu and Aki--the _older_ Akira have been by here like three times already looking for everyone," Rise adds. 

"What'd you tell them?" Yosuke asks.

"I told them that I hadn't seen you," Rise says. "Futaba has to keep hiding so they won't see she's in her metaverse costume."

Which would have happened as soon as they all went inside, Akira realizes. 

"I really don't think they're buying it," Rise says. "So... hurry, maybe?"

They hurry.

-//-

_Day 5_

_Very Early Morning_

_(Like seriously, way too early in the morning)_

-//-

Akira spends most of the night with Yu, searching for the group of mingled Phantom Thieves and Investigation Team members--and Haru, who is not technically (yet?) part of either--who had vanished a little after dinner.

He has a feeling he knows where they are. He has a feeling Yu does too, especially when they find Rise sitting outside the Evil Spirit Club labyrinth just after midnight. She's still there when they walk past it again half an hour later, and then again when they check after that.

Yeah. The missing people are _definitely_ in the labyrinth.

But Rise keeps telling them that no one's in there, and of course there's no _reason_ for them to be there, so it takes them searching the school top to bottom, twice, before they admit that actually, there's only one possible place that they could be. And by the time they get back to the labyrinth, they find a tired but chatty group huddled around the entrance.

Akira does a quick headcount. Nobody's missing. No one even looks hurt. 

"We should say something," Yu says, but Akira puts a hand on Yu's shoulder to stop him before he can take more than a step toward the group.

"Let me do it," he says. "If that's okay?"

Yu hesitates. "This keeps happening," he says at last. "If people keep going into the labyrinth on their own, then eventually..."

"Eventually someone's going to get seriously hurt," Akira says. "I know, trust me." He hates the idea of his friends getting hurt. He _hates_ it.

Yu's eyes search Akira's face for a long few moments, and eventually he nods. "Then... okay," he says. "I'm going to head back and... try to get some sleep, I guess."

Both of them know he's not going to even close his eyes until everyone's back where they're supposed to be, safe and sound. 

"Okay," Akira says. "I'll see you soon."

And then he waits until Yu is gone around the corner before strolling out and calling, "You guys have fun?"

Absolute silence, immediately.

(Akira doesn't really _like_ this part of being a leader, being the guy who has to say _hey guys this isn't okay_ )

(But... this isn't even the first surreptitious trip into the labyrinth, and this can't keep happening)

"It's not a big deal," Futaba says. "We were just..." She starts to say something, then catches the look on his face and frowns. "We wanted to go into the labyrinth for a while. It's fine and everyone got out."

"Yeah," Ryuji adds. "We just went in and screwed around for a while. Telling ghost stories and whatever."

Most of them look tired, tired like they've been _running,_ not tired like they're up too late. Akira's gaze ranges over the whole group--past Ryuji and Kanji, who he's not really surprised to see here, past his younger self, who he'd be shocked to _not_ see here, past even Naoto and Haru, who he kind of wouldn't have thought were likely to get caught up in something like this. But then again, maybe it's not that hard to believe. Everyone getting caught up together on what probably hadn't seemed like too stupid of an idea at first, and then suddenly, here they are. Maybe they _had_ just started out telling ghost stories, but it looks like something had gone wrong. Chie has fresh bruises on her knees, and Ryuji has a cut over one eye that looks like it had only recently stopped bleeding. 

"Come _on_ , guys," Akira says. "Look, you all know that I'm as likely to run off and do something stupid as the next guy--"

"More likely," Futaba says.

"Yeah," Akira says. "Sure, probably _more_ likely. But we have to do the labyrinths together. I don't know what happened--" His gaze catches for a second on his younger self, and he course corrects mid-sentence. "I don't _remember_ what happened, and I'm not going to ask, but..."

But Rei is going to die if they don't change anything. That just shows this place is dangerous, and how easy would it be for other people to get hur toot? Or what if Rei's with the group the next time they decide to go into a labyrinth without enough backup, what if _that's_ how she dies?

"Please," Akira says quietly. "Right now we just all need to stick together while we're fighting. We can't lie to each other--we _all_ have to be on the same team."

Yosuke breaks first, wincing and rubbing nervously at the back of his head. "Yeah," he admits. "We didn't really think it through, and... we did sort of get in over our heads."

"It's not going to happen again," Naoto adds. She looks vaguely embarrassed, and won't meet _anyone's_ gaze.

"Okay," Akira says. "Okay, then..." He takes a breath. "I'm just glad everyone got out of... whatever you got into, and you're all okay."

And like that's the signal, the group breaks up, and start heading back toward the gym. Akira grabs his younger self by the elbow as he starts to walk past, and says, "I want to talk to you a little bit more, okay? Just hang back for a minute."

"Am I in trouble?" the younger Akira asks.

There's something about the deer in headlights look on the face of his younger self that makes Akira think of something he's heard Futaba call his younger self a few times. He would never, out loud, call his younger self Smolkira, but there's something about this conversation that just... makes Akira feel very old, talking to someone young.

"Well," he says out loud. "I mean, yeah, but what else is new?"

There's no one else left in the hall by this point except for the ever present cognitions, so Akira lets go of Smolkira's arm. "Listen," he says. "I know what it's like to be you, and... I'm not saying I have everything figured out." He's made his fair share of bad decisions, even lately. "But you can't just go making trouble for the sake of trouble." He runs his hand through his hair distractedly, which, he's pretty sure, does nothing to make it less of a disaster. How is he supposed to say this? Where is he supposed to _start?_

"Trickster," he says at last, and sees the way that his younger self responds--looking up at him like he's called his name, reacting to it the same way that Akira knows that he himself would.

Of course it's the same. There's so much about them that's eerily, exactly the same that even after almost a week here Akira still can't figure out how to handle it sometimes. And it makes sense, it does, but it's just--it never stops being weird.

"Do you know what that means?" Akira asks. "Being a Trickster?"

Smolkira shakes his head uncomfortably and shrugs one shoulder. "No," he says. "It's just something Lavenza says. Why? Do you know?"

"I'm... figuring it out," Akira says. "And I don't know if I have it all right, but I can tell you what I think it means." 

There's no answer, but Smolkira is watching him with interest now. 

"It means you're always going to be trouble," Akira tells his younger self. " _Always_ , whether you're trying to be or not. But that doesn't mean that you just... run around getting yourself and other people into dangerous situations just because you can." He makes a fist with one hand, and stares at it as it goes on. "It means that you have to point it in the right direction. There are so many parts of the world that _need_ a little bit of trouble. There are things that are wrong that need to be right, and those are the things that are worth getting into trouble for."

He watches his younger self carefully, trying to read from his face whether this is making sense. This isn't something he's ever really had to put into words before. It's just a part of himself he's come to gradually understand, over the years, over so much trouble and so many mistakes, something that has finally led him to what feels like the best possible way for him to be a Trickster--as someone that will step into a confrontation that has nothing to do with him that will get him arrested. As someone that won't stay away from people he's told to stay away from, if they need help. As a part of the Phantom Thieves.

"Protect your friends," he tells Smolkira. "Protect people that need to be protected. Try to change things that need changing, because that's the best kind of trouble you can make. But don't... don't go randomly wandering into dangerous places in the middle of the night."

(Some inconveniently honest part of himself points out that he's done his fair share of sneaking out in the middle of the night, out of places where he's supposed to be and into places he definitely _shouldn't_ )

(...okay, so maybe he's not perfect, and maybe it's not fair to expect a younger version of himself to be perfect either, but the labyrinths are not a good thing to be messing with)

"Or don't _just_ go randomly wandering into dangerous place in the middle of the night, anyway," he says. "And _think_ about it, first. You can be trouble and be smart at the same time."

Smolkira is quiet for a couple seconds. Then he says, "You sound like you get this so much more than I do. I'm just... trying to keep up with everything. All year, or ever since--" He bites his lip for a second, then continues. "Ever since Mom and Dad died, I've just been... trying to keep up with life, and not screw up, and that keeps landing me in all this trouble that _I'm not asking for_."

"I know," Akira says. "I know, trust me, _I know_ what it's like when everything feels out of control and you're just... neck deep in trouble and you're never going to get out. But there's still a right kind of trouble and a wrong kind of trouble, and you always have to try and make the right kind. Okay?"

"I--I _think_ so." Smolkira looks thoughtful, and not particularly happy, but at least he's thinking. "It just sounds like a really weird way to think about... you know. Everything."

Yeah, well... he's a Trickster that's been raised by a cop. Akira knows he has a weird way of looking at the world, but there _is_ a right and there _is_ a wrong, and sometimes the only way to get to the wrong bits to go right is to make a whole bunch of trouble. _Doing good_ and _making trouble_ aren't mutually exclusive.

"We should be getting back to the gm," Akira says, after a few moments of quiet between them. "It's... either too late or too early to have this conversation, I think."

Smolkira nods, and so they start walking.

After a while, Akira realizes that the other him is dragging a little, and looks down to see a thoughtful expression on his face. 

"Do you mind if I ask you something?" Smolkira says.

"Shoot."

"So, we were kind of talking about... I mean, I mentioned earlier--" He hesitates, but plunges onward. "I mentioned Mom and Dad. Do you ever think about what they would say about all this, if they knew?"

"Sometimes," Akira admits. "Not as much as I used to." It's been a long time. They've been gone for a third of his life, and Akira knows that he's changed, and changed a lot, since they died. 

"Well," his younger self insists. "What do you think when you _do_ think about it?"

"Honestly?" Akira says. "I have no idea what they'd say." Because he's _changed_ , so much, in the years since he first saw that news report about the accident that had killed them. He'd been just a kid back then. He'd been relatively normal, no more likely to get into trouble than his classmates. And then suddenly he'd been alone, and he'd had to make decisions, and figure things out on his own, and make the choices that would start shaping the whole rest of his life. He'd had to figure out _who he was._

And it turns out that who he was--who he is--is a Trickster.

But there's nothing in his life from before his parents had died that gives him a hint to what they would think of his life now. 

"I don't know either," Smolkira says. "But I hope... I hope they'd be happy aout it."

They're almost at the gym by now. Akira stops, spares a couple seconds to consider what he's about to do, thinks _wow, this is weird_ , and then pulls his younger self into a hug. At first it's awkward, and Smolkira seems stiff and surprised, and then he sags a little and lets it happen.

(This, Akira realizes, is the last time either of them is going to have someone around that's an actual blood relative. They're the same person, but there's _no one else_ _left_ from the Kurusu family)

"They're gone," he tells his younger self. "And we'll never get to say goodbye. We'll never get to show them the person we're growing up to be, or find out what they'd actually think of having a Trickster for a son. But they're always going to be a part of us, because... because how could they _not_ be? They're gone, but they've shaped our life because they _were_ here. And you're going to find new people to care about. _I have a family_ , and I know that you don't see it yet, in your time, but... that's coming for you, too. I promise, I _promise_ , it's coming." He takes a deep breath. "But for now, please stop sneaking into the labyrinth without the group, okay? I'd really like you to live long enough to get to that point."

He doesn't know how long it takes them to actually get into the gym after that, but it's a while.

-//-

Yu is lying in a sleeping bag on the floor of the gym, exhausted but with his eyes wide open, unable to force himself to sleep until he knows that everyone is back. And _most_ of them are, actually--the group that had gone into the labyrinth in the middle of the night had come back quiet and subdued, and Yu doesn't know what Akira had said to them all, but he imagines that there's something a little bit embarrassing about being told off by the Trickster. Maybe that had done the trick.

...on the other hand, it's the two Akiras that aren't back yet.

Everyone else is asleep when the door opens one last time, and the both of them slip in. The older one is almost silent as he goes to his usual sleeping bag, but the younger one doesn't manage it quite as well. Yu can hear his shoes squeaking on the gym floor as he heads over to where Yu is, to where _his_ sleeping bag sits in the space next to Yu's. Then Akira sits down, takes off his shoes, and burrows into his bag.

Satisfied that everyone is where they're supposed to be, Yu rolls over and closes his eyes. It's almost three in the morning, but Yu thinks he can at least get _some_ sleep before they head back into the labyrinth tomorrow. He closes his eyes, and is asleep almost immediately.

(Sometime later, in some unknown, hazy hour of the morning, he wakes up to the feeling of Akira's back pressed up against his. He's all long, gangly pre-teen limbs, one elbow pressing into Yu's side)

(It should feel uncomfortable, but the sound of Akira's breathing--familiar an distinct after months of sharing a bedroom, makes it less weird. What was it Yusuke had said the other day? About Akira being like a brother to him?)

(Yeah)

He sleeps soundly for the rest of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can always tell which chapters I really enjoyed writing, because they end up like 15,000 words long xD 
> 
> Also I finally got to touch on something that I've been thinking about for a while, which is--Akira is a Trickster. Who grew up with a _cop_. That has to be such a weird worldview to have, and honestly I think I can best describe it in dnd terms by saying that Akira is a chaotic good character that believes in a lawful good world. Like... I think that he sees himself as a part of a system. And he's maybe the chaotic part of that system that causes trouble and shakes up the parts of the system that aren't fair and aren't working. 
> 
> Have I been thinking too much about this? Yep! But that is my view of Akira in this verse :p


	24. Persona Q - Part 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It feels worth saying that two updates a week is not the new normal, I've just had more free time because of the recent holidays :)
> 
> (And I really, really wanted to get to the end of the fourth labyrinth... :D)

_Day 5_

_Afternoon_

-//-

They don't go into the labyrinth the next morning, instead waiting for afternoon to give everyone the chance to rest up. A pretty big part of the group had been up all night, and even the ones that had stayed out of the whole mess with the labyrinth are probably overdue for some time off.

Yu has never spent this much concentrated time fighting Shadows. And he wants to keep going, he really wants to get out of here, but... well, they do need a break.

So that's what they do. They take a break from the labyrinth and from fighting. And Yu does his best to be productive anyway, going up to the Velvet Room to talk to Margaret, Marie, and Lavenza about anything the three of them might have figured out about this situation. But when he gets there he finds the teenaged Akira already there, and somehow what he'd meant with the best of intentions to be a pretty serious conversation turns into what feels almost... _weirdly_ casual.

It's weird because Akira and Lavenza are friends. Actual, genuine friends. He's known her for years, and he feels comfortable telling the kinds of stories that Akira would never have brought up around Margaret, or with just joking around with her. Akira does at least seem to have some more respect for Margaret, or at least he doesn't know her well enough to be as comfortable, but he's not at _all_ as polite as Yu thinks that _he_ would have been, in this situation.

So Yu sort of awkwardly hangs around with the rest of them, listening more than talking as the conversation drifts toward someone he hasn't met (yet?), another Velvet Room attendant called Elizabeth. 

"How'd you meet her?" Yu asks Akira, as Lavenza finishes a story about her sister that has a kind of mischievous laughter sparking in her eyes.

"Long story," Akira says. "There was this tournament thing we all got stuck in, and Elizabeth just... sort of invited herself."

"Of course she did," Margaret sighs.

"So the rest of us all _had_ to fight," Akira continues. "Because we got dragged into the tournament and those were the rules, whatever--"

He's much too casual about this, Yu thinks.

"And then here comes Elizabeth," Akira continues. "And she's basically like--she just shows up and decides she _wants_ to fight."

"Who did she want to fight?" Marie asks. "And _why?"_

"Me, at first," Akira says. "And I'm still not really clear on the why, but I'm pretty sure it would have ended badly." He shrugs. "So then she agreed to fight Lavenza instead."

"Of course," Lavenza says, echoing both Margaret's words and her genuine sigh.

Yu bites back a smile. "Everything I hear about this Elizabeth makes her sound..." He stops short, because how do you finish that sentence politely?

Margaret, to his surprise, laughs. "She used to have--Lavenza, do you remember the song she made up about--"

Lavenza nods eagerly. "Yes!" she says. "What was it--something about our master's nose?"

"I don't think I've ever heard him as annoyed as he was the first time she started singing it," Margaret says.

"That song is not to be sung in this room again," Lavenza says, in an actually pretty good imitation of Igor's high voice. Even Yu cracks a smile at hearing it.

"Who's that supposed to be?" Akira asks.

Lavenza nudges him, her expression still lifted by her earlier laughter. "Our master," she says, with a quick motion between herself and Margaret. "You have to admit it was good."

"Igor," Yu elaborates, when Akira still looks blank. "That's Igor."

"Oh," Akira says, and makes a face at Lavenza. "In that case, it's a _terrible_ imitation."

"I have _practiced_ that, Trickster," Lavenza tells him, in a voice of wounded pride.

"Then why doesn't it sound anything like Igor?" he asks. 

She smacks him.

"I'm with Lavenza on this one," Yu says. "It sounds a lot like Igor, actually."

Akira snorts, but something about his expression is just a little bitter. "I'm pretty sure his voice has actually started narrating my nightmares? It's that whole, you know--" He pitches his voice lower for a second. _"'Welcome to my Velvet Room'_ thing, you know? _Kind_ of terrifying. And it doesn't sound anything like that."

Margaret and Lavenza exchange a brief look.

"Is that what he sounds like when you've spoken to him?" Lavenza asks uncertainly.

"Pretty much," Akira says. "Only probably a little, uh, worse." He fidgets. "...why are you looking at me like that?"

"I need to know more about the Velvet Room you've seen," Lavenza says, shifting forward toward him, and there's suddenly no laughter at all in her voice. 

"Why?" Akira asks.

" _Because something is wrong,"_ Lavenza says, and her tone is so absolutely serious that it seems to take Akira aback. It definitely surprises Yu, who had not expected this kind of reaction out of the two Velvet Room attendants. 

He glances over at Marie, but she just rolls her eyes and shrugs.

"Okay," Akira says slowly. "So--okay. I'll tell you whatever you want to know."

He talks for a long time. Lavenza and Margaret have questions, and every one of Akira's answers seems to make the two of them more serious and grim.

"You guys can't just keep asking questions and not tell me anything," Akira says, after quite some time of this. "Seriously, what's going on?"

"It..." Lavenza is visibly uncertain and worried. "It is likely, from what you've said, that whoever it is that you've been dealing with in the Velvet Room is not our master."

"Which unfortunately raises some... possibilities about what happened to Lavenza," Margaret adds. "Or at least _why_ it might have happened."

"Because she would have recognized him," Akira says. "Or--not recognized him?" He looks over at Lavenza.

"I don't know," Lavenza says quietly. "From what you've told me, I don't have enough information to figure out who exactly he is." Her eyes snap to Akira. "But _whoever_ he is," she says. "He is dangerous. If he has the ability to remove and replace our master, and to force me out of the Velvet Room, he is dangerous. _Dangerous_ , Trickster, do you understand?"

"No," Akira says. 

"This is one kind of trouble where you need to try and keep your nose _clean,_ " she tells him. "You need to stay out of whatever is going on."

Akira is quiet for a few seconds, expression absolutely impassive. "I don't really think that's an option," he says at last, slowly. "Even if I wanted to leave this whole thing alone, which I _don't_ , he's pulled me into it. I can't just walk away. I _won't_ , and also I don't see any way that walking away from the Velvet Room would end well for me."

Lavenza doesn't say anything, but her expression says clearly that she knows he's right.

"You _can_ at least be smart about it," Margaret tells him. "Don't confront him. Don't let him know that _you_ know, and be as careful as you can possibly manage."

"That would be a lot easier if I was going to remember any of this after we leave," Akira points out.

Lavenza raises an eyebrow. "But you already have an idea of how to do that," she says. "Don't you?"

"What idea did you have?" Yu asks. As far as he can tell, there's no way to force themselves to remember anything that's happened here after it's over. He knows that Akira--that both of them, actually--have been thinking about it, but Yu's not sure that it would be a good idea for... well, for anyone that had come from his earlier time. There's too much risk of changing things, possibly _breaking_ things. But he has to admit that it's not quite the same thing for the Phantom Thieves, since there's no one here from _their_ future.

(And he doesn't know as much about the Velvet Room as its two attendants do, obviously, but he knows that it is a strange, and powerful place, and he's absolutely worried about some imposter getting at Akira from in there)

"I wasn't going to say anything," Akira admits. "Because I kind of felt like you'd all tell me that if we're supposed to forget after this is over, and that trying to remember would just be making trouble for no reason."

"And normally you would be right about that," Margaret says. "But circumstances are very different now. What was this idea you had?"

"I was in the nurse's office yesterday," Akira says. "And I saw that--" he gestures to his upper arm, looking at Lavenza. "That cut, right? The one that scarred up badly enough that I still have it today."

"Okay," Yu says. "And?"

"And," Akira says. "That means _something_ that happened here physically stayed with me after I left the labyrinth the first time. Look, so--I've been thinking about remembering, and there's really no way to do it. Or at least no way that I'd be able to figure out. I don't know anything about magic memory loss, or whatever's going on here. So literally remembering what happens here isn't an option. Which means that what I want to do is find a way of getting a message with the whole story back out to the real world after this is over. To take the knowledge of what happened here with me, even if I never actually have any _memories_ of this place."

"Okay," Yu says. "So that's--writing a message, or something?"

"Yeah," Akira says. "Exactly, it's ' _or something_ ,' because I don't think that just writing a message out is going to work. I mean... look at us."

Yu looks between the two of them, but whatever Akira's seeing, he just doesn't get. 

"We've been here five days already," Akira says. "Fighting most of the time, getting hurt, getting into all kinds of weird situations. Everyone's a little... you know. Ragged."

This is true. They're doing pretty good, all things considered. No one's been seriously injured (apart from the smaller Akira, apparently, who had _not_ mentioned to Yu that he'd gotten a fresh scar since they've been here), but they've still been wearing the same clothes for close to a week now.

"There's no way we were that much of a mess when we got back, though," Akira continues. "Because I mean... I _barely_ remember going to Yasogami for the culture festival that year. None of us thought anything weird had happened, none of us thought _hey there's something wrong._ If we'd gotten back and looked like we do now--or worse than we do now, after a few more days--we all would have known something was wrong. Plus I think Dojima would have had something to say about us walking into the house looking like this."

"I'd buy that," Yu agrees. The wear and tear that seem natural and barely noticeable after what they've been through so far would have been surprising and suspicious if it had just... _happened,_ for no apparent reason, in the middle of the culture festival. 

"So our memories aren't coming with," Akira says. "And our stuff is going back to the way it was when we came in. Otherwise all this would have been easy, and Plan A would have been just write everything down on something and have Yusuke draw it all out."

"How would _that_ help?" Marie asks.

Akira makes a vague hand gesture. "He has this weird... thing?" he says. "He can draw stuff from the metaverse, even stuff he doesn't know anything about, and it just comes out more real than he means it to. I don't know _what_ he's doing, he doesn't know _how_ he's doing it, but he... I don't think he'd have to actually remember what happened to be able to draw it."

"It's certainly something we've seen in this room before," Lavenza says thoughtfully. "Although not often."

"And _normally_ I'd have about a hundred questions about that," Akira says. "But we can come back to that later--the point is that it's not going to be possible to just write things down, because it _really_ doesn't seem likely that any of our stuff is coming back with us, like I said." He grins. "But the younger me got hurt," he says. "And the scar isn't going to go away when we go home, because I still have it, so _that's_ where the message is going to be."

"Please tell me you're not going to cover yourself in scars," Yu says flatly.

"Marker, actually," Akira says. "I have some of Yusuke's that he swears aren't actually permanent. Or toxic." He shrugs. "And... maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. But it looks like the only thing that's coming back with us is... _us_. Physically, us. So this is the best idea I cam come up with."

"It's not a terrible idea," Margaret says. "There's no guarantee that it will work, but given the circumstances I think it might be the best chance you have."

"Cool," Akira says, a little bit of tension going out of his shoulders. "Great. I was sort of worried you guys were going to hear that and say it wouldn't work for some reason."

"No reason I can see," Lavenza says. "Or at least, no more reason than what I'm sure you've thought of yourself. As my sister says, there is no guarantee."

"Sure," Akira says. "No guarantee, but--still the best plan I can think of."

-//-

_Day 5_

_Evening_

-//-

The rest of the Evil Spirit Club doesn't take that much longer to get through. The stairs that Chie, Ryuji, and the younger Akira had found after falling through that hole in the floor turns out to lead further down as well as up, and with that they're able to get to the end of the labyrinth before the end of the day.

(Which does _not,_ as Yu had made a point of telling them all, mean that it had been a good thing that they'd gone alone into the labyrinth at night, even if it had ended up accidentally helpful)

But they pass through the section that looks like a haunted school, and then the part that looks like a haunted hospital, and finally get to the bottom. There, they find another horrible Shadow waiting for them, and they fight what turns out to be a hunchback doctor that Akira really doesn't like much. He's never really had any serious medical issues, even after five years of fighting Shadows, but there's something about this doctor that he just does not like.

As the Shadow shouts about emergency operations and trying to save them all, the thing he keeps thinking about is the day that Nanako had almost died ( _had_ died, briefly) in the hospital in Inaba. He knows that it hadn't been anything like this, and that it had actually been the quick actions of the doctors at that hospital that had brought her back, but...

He's just never really liked spending time in hospitals, ever since then.

They find another chest waiting for them, after they've gotten past the doctor, and this time there's a lock of long, blonde hair inside, exactly the same color and length as Rei's hair. By this point, it's impossible to ignore the fact that everything they've found, at the bottom of all three labyrinths so far, is something that seems to point to her and Zen. Rei's the one that's been completely freaking out every time they find something new, while Zen seems to be getting snatches of memory back with each new item. Nothing particularly _helpful_ , so far, but--bits and pieces, anyway.

This time, as Rei looks blankly down at the lock of hair, holding it loosely in her hand, Zen makes an uncomfortable noise. "I think," he says. "That these labyrinths exist because of Rei."

"What does that mean, exactly?" Naoto asks him.

"I do not know," Zen admits. "But I know that they're here because of--"

Rei's head snaps up, and she stares at him, her eyes wide. "No!" she says. "No, I don't want to--" For a second, words fail her. Her jaw works soundlessly and then she says, "I don't want to hear it."

"Rei," Yukiko says gently. "We just want to help you figure out what happened."

" _I don't want to talk about it!"_ she almost shouts. "I don't want to know, I just--I want to go home!"

"We'll bring you home," Haru says, putting a hand on Rei's shoulder. Her voice is kind and genuinely sympathetic, managing to make her sound refined and gentle even though she's disheveled and covered in small scratches after fighting on the front line during the battle with the doctor. "It's all going to work out, Rei," she promises. "We'll go home together."

Akira glances sideways at Yu, but neither of them says anything. So far, only the two of them, Yusuke, Zen, and Rei know what Akira had remembered about Rei dying in one of these labyrinths. After Akira had told her himself, he'd figured that if she wanted to tell anyone else, she would. It's not his place to say anything if she doesn't, and... well, she hasn't.

But that conversation is obviously on Rei's mind, because she breaks down into sobs at Haru's words. The lock of hair drops from her hand as she stands in the middle of the floor, shoulders shaking, and Akira's not sure if anyone else sees Zen reach down and pick it up as they start to make their way back to the entrance.

"One labyrinth left," Yu says quietly, so that only Akira can hear him. "Have you seen anything so far that looked like the place you saw in that memory?"

"No," Akira says. "It didn't look like any of the labyrinths we've seen so far."

"So whatever's going to happen is going to happen in the fourth labyrinth," Yu says. 

"It's starting to look like that," Akira agrees. "There's nowhere else left."

"I was hoping we'd gotten past it already," Yu admits. "And we could stop worrying."

Akira shakes his head. "We should be careful, going into the next one," he says. "More careful than we have been."

"And if we can convince Rei to stay back," Yu says. "That would be..."

"That would be great," Akira says. "Yeah. I'd feel a lot better about going into the end of this if we knew that Rei wasn't--"

"No."

He hadn't heard Zen coming up to them, but he manages to hide his surprise, instead of actually jumping at the unexpected voice. "What do you mean, no?" he asks.

"I still haven't remembered everything," Zen says. His voice, as ever, is absolutely serious--the only time Akira ever hears him with any warmth or excitement in his tone is when he's talking to Rei. "But I have a feeling that it's important for Rei to see this for herself."

"It's worth her life?" Yu asks doubtfully.

"I think that it is," Zen says.

"Why?" Akira asks.

"I do not know," Zen says. "But maybe this last labyrinth will give us that answer."

Akira doesn't say anything. Neither does Yu, although he looks troubled.

"I will talk to her once we find the next labyrinth," Zen says. "If she wants to stay--" He doesn't look like he likes that idea much, but continues. "If she wants to say out of it, then that is her choice. But I will tell her that I do not think she should. And I think she would listen to me."

"She probably will," Akira says. "But Zen, she could--"

"Die," Zen says. "Yes. I understand. But this is important. I think that it is _very_ important."

And Akira knows that some things _are_ worth risks, even deadly ones. Zen seems to have some connection to this labyrinth, and even if Akira himself isn't entirely convinced that this is worth the risk for Rei, Zen _is_. 

"I hope you're right," he tells Zen.

"So do I," Zen says, voice slightly more quiet now. "I very much hope that I am right."

-//-

_Day 6_

_Morning_

-//-

The fourth and final labyrinth is in a display that--in the normal, real world culture festival--had been set up as a tribute to Inaba's history. Here, it's a festival, dark inside except for the paper lanterns hanging around the walls. It's hot, too, but not uncomfortably so, and Yu thinks that the darkness has a less obviously menacing feeling than the Evil Spirit Club they'd just finished.

The rest of the group obviously thinks so too, and as they pass through the entrance and take in their new surroundings, everyone seems to be in a good mood. There's a lot of chatter from the Investigation Team about the festivals they've been to in Inaba in the real world, and whether they'd been anything like this. The Phantom Thieves, who (as far as Yu's heard) is mostly made up of people that had been born and raised in Tokyo, are a little less familiar with this kind of small town festival.

"It's not like the city doesn't have anything like this," Ryuji says. "It's just not..." He flaps a vague hand. "It's not _like this_."

"What does that even mean?" Kanji asks.

Ryuji makes a face.

"Events in Tokyo have a different feeling to them," Ann agrees. "They're more crowded and more--polished? But this is nice. Apart from--you know. The labyrinth situation."

"Maybe we can come see a festival in Inaba in the real world," Morgana says. "It sounds like fun. Hey, Joker, will you take us to one of these someday?"

There's no answer.

"Joker!" Morgana says again, a little bit louder.

"Huh?"

Yu turns to look back at the teenaged Akira, surprised by how distracted he sounds. What he sees is a distant, almost grim expression that makes something nervous start to churn in Yu's stomach. 

Akira's recognized this labyrinth, and this is it. They'd _known_ that it must be this one, but now they have confirmation that this is the labyrinth where Rei is going to die.

"Right," Akira says, to Morgana who is still looking at him and waiting for an answer. "Sounds like a good idea, Mona." He shakes his head, manages a smile, and manages to pick up the thread of the conversation pretty quickly after that.

Nobody other than Yu seems to notice that moment of distraction, and the cheerful conversation about festivals continues for most of the first floor. Yu can't make himself feel it, though, and as Akira puts on a more cheerful face, Yu feels himself getting more worried.

And this is not the time to start feeling distracted, because the labyrinth is starting to get trickier. There are doors that will only open if they bring a lighted torch there, and while there _are_ torches lying around and there _are_ pyres with open flames to light them with, the torches are finicky and refuse to stay lit for too long. More than once they have to backtrack multiple times, relighting the torch and then booking it back to the door and praying they'll be fast enough.

And the whole time, he just can't stop watching Rei. Waiting for whatever it is that's going to kill her.

Things have gotten so much more serious, over the past twenty four hours or so. Akira is going back home to a fake Igor that even the Velvet Room attendants are worried about, Rei is close to _actually dying_ , and there's nothing Yu can do about either of those things.

He has trouble shaking the worry off as they get to the second and even the third level of the labyrinth, which has some... less than great effects on his ability to focus on the fights they're going through. Normally, he doesn't have a problem with keeping track of the half dozen things he needs to have in his head at any given moment while fighting Shadows. _Normally_ , he can track how much health everyone has, who's running low on energy, who has which Persona, which items they're carrying, and whatever else they need to know, all without too much trouble.

Today, he's so out of it that he has his first experience ever of someone casting _recarm_ on him.

Akira--the teenage one, not the small one who has already run down ahead, taking the stairs two at a time--pulls Yu aside as they get to the stairs leading down to the third floor. 

For a second, Yu has the weird feeling that he's about to be lectured.

"Do we need to stop for the day?" Akira asks, keeping his voice low so that none of the rest of the group will hear. 

...he _is_ about to be lectured.

"No," Yu says. "I'm fine. Why?"

"Because I've never seen you this out of it," Akira says flatly. "And I don't know what has you so distracted, but it's basically the last thing we need right now."

Yu leans back against the wall and rubs at the side of his head. "I'm fine," he insists. "There's just a lot going on, and I'm not--used to it."

"I know," Akira says. "I get it. There's a lot to worry about right now. But you have to be able to focus, for the team."

"You don't look worried at all," Yu says.

"Well," Akira says. "No. But that's probably because I've been in over my head since the day the Phantom Thieves formed up, so I've had a lot of practice pretending things are fine when they're not."

"Sure," Yu says. "I do the same thing." Because he has to, because when they're in the TV World everyone looks at him to see how they're going to fight. And when they're looking at him, he can't let them see he's nervous or worried, even when he _is._ "But things are--" He hesitates, then admits in a lower voice, "Things are bad right now. Rei? _Igor_? I don't--"

"I know," Akira says. "Trust me, I keep thinking about Rei, and about--how much I _don't_ want to forget what we figured out about Igor, and honestly it's... it's like you said, it's just a lot."

"You seem like you're handling it okay," Yu says. Better than he is himself, anyway.

"Then I guess I'm better at faking it," Akira says. "And honestly, I've just done more things in the metaverse that I can look back at and say 'oh well, we got through that, we can get through this too.'"He shrugs. "It helps a little. It helps me hide it, but... yeah. I'm still worried about everything that's going on here."

And somehow, that makes it a little bit better. Just to not be the only one here that has to worry about keeping everyone in one piece, to not be the only one that knows what might be about to go wrong, to not be the only one with responsibility weighing down on him. It _helps_.

"Let's wrap things up here for today," Akira says. "We've made some pretty good progress, and we've done enough running around with the torches that I think everyone'll be happy about getting out early and getting some rest."

Yu _almost_ wants to argue, just because he wants this labyrinth to be over more than he has wanted to finish any of the others. But... he _is_ distracted, and that's _not_ great, and so he nods. "Yeah," he says. "We'll come back at it tomorrow."

"Definitely," Akira agrees. "It'll be easier to concentrate then."

Yu hears _you need to get your head on straight_ , and he agrees.

They go downstairs just long enough to tell the others that they're done for the day, and as Akira had expected, no one argues this.

"We're finishing a little earlier than usual today, I think," Yukiko muses.

"A little," Akira says. "But there's been a lot more running around and using up energy. I think it's worth going back early for today."

"Maybe we should try and cook something for dinner today," Chie says. "You know, Yukiko, like we were talking about the other day?" She glances over at a couple of the other girls, who immediately start an enthusiastic conversation about ingredients.

...and suddenly, Yu has another reason to feel worried.

(He's tasted cooking from the girls on his team before, and he never wants to again)

(He's not sure that he can survive tasting it again)

-//-

Akira, as the whole group heads back out of the labyrinth together, finds himself thinking-- _Yu's human_.

And it' a stupid thing to think, because what else would Yu be? Except that he's never let Akira see this side of him before. He's never let him see that he's worried and stressed and in over his head the exact same way that Akira is. Maybe it's just because they're the same age now (or technically, and even more disconcertingly, _Akira is a few months older_ ). But it's weird that they're coming into this on the same level, as the two leaders of their respective teams. It's weird that Akira knows more about the metaverse than Yu does, it's weird that he'd had to step in today and say _your head's not in this, let's go home for the day._

It's just going to be something else to think about.

(Something else on top of _Rei is going to die soon_ and _what even is going on with Igor_ and _oh no, the girls are going to cook_ )

-//-

_Day 6_

_Evening  
_

-//-

The girls, unfortunately, are not dissuaded from their plan of (trying to) cook dinner when they get out of the labyrinth and back to the school. It's all the girls on the Investigation Team, plus Ann, Haru, and Rei, who seem interested and don't know what they're getting into.

"Listen," Akira says, when he's called an emergency meeting of the rest of the Phantom Thieves, plus Makoto. "What you have to understand is that whatever the girls come up with, it might look good, it might look bad, but _it will not be edible_."

"I don't know," Ryuji says. "A bunch of girls making us dinner? How bad can it be?"

" _Bad_ ," Akira says. "I don't know why, but for some reason none of the girls on the other team can cook. At all." 

"I've never heard about this before," Yusuke says, leaning forward.

"I didn't think you were ever going to be likely to have to eat anything they made," Akira says. "So I've never had to warn you about it."

"But it's really that bad?" Makoto asks skeptically. 

"I believe it," Futaba volunteers, raising a hand. "The uncle I stayed with after Mom died thought it would be a good idea to make me cook, because I guess he thought I'd be a good at it, for some reason?"

"What happened?" Akira asks, recognizing from her tone that this is a story without a good ending.

"Well he didn't... _actually_ end up in the hospital," Futaba says.

There's a pause. Akira spares a second to be grateful that even though it sounds like Futaba is just as bad at cooking as the Investigation Team girls, at least she also has no _interest_ in it.

"Is that how bad it's going to be tonight?" Ryuji asks.

"We might get lucky," Akira says, without much hope. "I don't know if Ann or Haru can cook at all, but we might get lucky and one of them can be a voice of reason." Rei, he feels a little bit less confident about. First because she still can't remember anything about her life before the labyrinth, and second because he'd seen her eating fish flavored ice cream at one of the food stalls the other day with obvious enjoyment.

"Ann definitely can't," Ryuji volunteers. "You weren't at Shujin last year, when we did _our_ culture festival, but her class did this cafe thing and--I don't think it was an actual health risk or anything but it really wasn't good."

Makoto frowns. "I'm sure that whatever they make," she says. "We can manage to eat enough of it to be polite."

"Come on, though," Ryuji says. "You remember that cafe from last year, don't you?"

Makoto hesitates. "Well... I do remember there was a first year class that the student council received a lot of complaints about..." For a second she looks hesitant, then rallies. "But it _wasn't_ a health concern, so we can be polite. Okay?"

"Someone's coming," Morgana announces urgently, and Akira tenses looks over his shoulder. Then he relaxes when he sees Kanji and Yosuke heading in their direction. Both of them look thoroughly depressed.

"Sounds like you guys have heard the legend of Mystery Food X already," Yosuke says.

"We didn't hear it had a name," Morgana says. "Is this about the girls' cooking?"

"Yeah," Kanji mutters, as he and Yosuke sidle in to join the rest of them.

"See?" Akira says, gesturing to the two new arrivals. "I'm not exaggerating, this food is _bad_ , don't eat it."

"Sounds like you've had some of it too?" Yosuke asks, with obvious sympathy.

"There was this one time..." He hesitates, trying to remember the exact timing. "I think it was close to the end of the year, so it hasn't happened yet for you guys. But the girls did some more cooking, and Yu took some home 'to eat later--'" he uses air quotes, because he's convinced Yu would never have eaten it at all, full stop. "And it turns out that stealing random things out of the fridge without knowing where they came from is a bad idea."

"They made it once on our school camping trip," Yosuke says. " _Trust me_ , you do not want to put this anywhere near your mouth."

"You know what I'm thinking," Morgana says.

"What?" Akira asks.

"Heist," Morgana immediately.

"Is that just our plan A for everything now?" Yusuke asks.

"If it really is as bad as everyone's saying," Morgana continues, undeterred. "Then we have to do something to make sure none of us has to eat it."

"You want to _steal_ what they're going to make?" Yosuke says.

"Yes," Kanji says. "I am _so_ on board with this cat's idea."

" _I am not a cat!"_

"I don't know if this is a good plan," Makoto says.

"Nah," Ryuji says, looking much more excited now. "Akira heisted a famous painting _on accident_ the other day. We can handle this."

Yosuke gives Akira a weird sideways look. He shrugs in response, because he's not going to explain the _Sayuri_ right now.

"I have a feeling that the girls are going to be even more mad than Madarame was, though," Yusuke says.

"Possibly," Akira admits. "I... still think it might be worth the risk."

"It's really, honestly that bad?" Makoto asks.

"It's _really_ that bad," Akira confirms. He knows that Makoto's going to be the least likely person to be on board with all this, and also the _most_ likely to go to the girls immediately and tell them the plan if she isn't convinced it's a good idea. So he watches her carefully, and is relieved when she finally nods.

"Alright," she says. 

"We'll make a Phantom Thief out of you yet," Morgana says, and Makoto... does not look as upset about that as Akira would have expected her to be. If anything, he thinks he catches a little hint of... pride, maybe? 

... _can_ they make a Phantom Thief out of her? She doesn't seem to have any problem fighting with them here, although admittedly there is a difference between 'trying to get out of a labyrinth in another dimension' and 'trying to change the hearts of corrupt adults.' 

But she doesn't look upset right now. And Akira hadn't been there when she awoke her Persona (he _had_ , technically, but he'd been there as a twelve year old and doesn't remember it because of invonvenient labyrnth amnesia), but suddenly he wishes he knew how that had happened. 

She could have awakened the kind of Persona that Yu and his friends have. The kind where you use a card to summon it, that would have meant she's more like the Investigation Team than the Phantom Thieves. Instead, she wears a mask, like the Phantom Thieves do, and Morgana still insists that those masks represent the spirit of a person's rebellion. So maybe there are still some parts of Makoto that Akira hasn't had a chance to see yet.

(He'd like to have her as a Phantom Thief. Her _and_ Haru, actually)

(He thinks they'd be good at it)

They don't plan a very complicated heist, because honestly Akira is learning that the more people are involved in a heist, and the most complicated that they make it, the less likely it is to work. So they just hang around and wait until the girls are done with their cooking, and the smell of it has had a chance to waft through most of the building--which has the side effect of _completely_ convincing the people that have never been exposed to it before that it's not something they want to eat--and then they go in.

Most of the girls have moved away from the cooking area by this point, going out to chase down everyone else and tell them that the food is ready. When Haru and Ann are the only two left, they pick Makoto as probably the most trustworthy looking person out of all of them and send her in to find a way to get the two of them out.

"What am I supposed to say?" Makoto asks.

"Just say anything!" Yosuke says.

"Say you want to help them bring the food out or something," Futaba says. "And then run off with it."

"I can't dothat," Makoto protests. "They'll know it was me right away."

"Then you can come up with something better," Futaba says, and gives Makoto a surprisingly strong push out of their hiding spot.

"Hmm?" Haru says, turning around at the sound of Makoto stumbling forward. "Oh, hello Makoto."

"Hello," Makoto says.

There's a long pause.

"She sounds way too awkward," Yosuke groans. "They're never going to buy that."

"So listen," Makoto continues. "I know that you guys have been working hard on this, so... I wanted to come give you guys a break. I can help you move the food out for you."

"I knew she couldn't come up with anything better," Futaba says under her breath.

"Makoto," Haru says. "Listen..."

There's another long pause, and then Ann says bluntly. "This food is terrible and we're trying to figure out a way to get rid of it."

"Oh good," Makoto says, sagging with visible relief. "Because we were coming here to steal it and do the exact same thing."

Which is how the end up grabbing all the food, running _full out_ down to one of the rooms in the practice building, as far away from the labyrinths as they can get, and just... hiding it. There's not exactly any garbage pickup in this fake school in some weird corner of the metaverse, so hiding it away is their best and only option for getting it out of their lives.

The girls are upset when they get back, and Akira thinks they're also suspicious of the story they put together about how Ann and Haru had left the food alone ( _"for just, like, two minutes guys, really"_ ) and found it gone when they got back. Luckily everyone outside the cooking group is so relieved to be spared Mystery Food X that they're all able to work together to smooth things over. They find other food for dinner, and everyone survives the night.

And that might have been the end of it, except for what happens the next day, in the labyrinth.

-//-

_Day 7_

_Afternoon_

-//-

The second day in the labyrinth goes better than the first day had, in Yu's opinion. There _is_ a little bit of tension in the group initially, because the girls had tried to cook something last night and it had gone mysteriously missing.

(Not really all that mysterious, but Yu's not about to make a whole thing out of it)

(He might have helped, if he'd known what they were planning)

But the tension doesn't last long, the fighting is more important, and honestly it's pretty hard to keep focused on being irritated with each other when they're so busy with the Shadows in the labyrinth. They're starting to get the hang of running around with the torches and getting where they need to go before they're blown out, and after Ryuji starts handing out pointers from the year he'd spent running track, it turns into a sort of competition. It actually starts to be a little bit _fun_.

And maybe that's why they don't notice the F.O.E. until it's too late to do anything about it.

The F.O.E.s in this labyrinth, for some unknowable reason, have taken the form of sweaty guys in loincloths. Yu has no idea why. He has, honestly, _no_ idea why, he does not _want_ to know why, but suddenly here they are running through the labyrinth with a surprisingly fast giant that they can't even hope to fight racing after them.

"We need a distraction," Yu says.

"What the heck is going to distract one of these things?" Kanji demands.

A very good question, which Yu doesn't have an easy answer for. "Let's just split up for now," he says. "It'll have to pick one group to follow, and the other one can... I don't know, sneak up behind it with an attack or something?"

"You think we have some kind of attack that might be able to hurt it?" Haru asks.

Yu hesitates. "Well..."

"There's an intersection coming up," Morgana interrupts. "If we're going to split up, we have to do it now!"

And they still don't have any kind of plan. 

"Great," teenage Akira says, with no enthusiasm whatsoever in his voice. "Awesome. I guess split up and we'll... we'll figure out what to do next after that."

So they split up. Yu dodges left, teenage Akira goes right, and the rest of the group splits up more or less at random following one or the other. The F.O.E. doesn't even hesitate when it gets to the split, heading right after the other group. Which is great, Yu doesn't actually want to be chased by the F.O.E., but on the other hand that means he's going to have to be the one to figure out how to take the thing out.

He kind of has the feeling that Akira would have been pretty good at coming up with something. He just has that kind of a brain, Yu is learning, when it comes to getting through the metaverse. He can fight, he _will_ fight, but he'll try other things too.

They skid around a corner and Yu stops the rest of them from going any further. "Okay," he says. "So the F.O.E. isn't chasing us, and that means we need to figure out a way to help the rest of them." His eyes range over the people that had come with him, about half and half between the Investigation Team and the Phantom Thieves, plus (he's happy to see) both Zen and Rei. That would have been really unfortunate, if they'd gone the other way, and this F.O.E. chase ended up being how Rei dies. So it's good she'd ended up in the group the F.O.E. hadn't gone after.

"How are we going to do that, exactly?" Yusuke asks.

"I'm open to ideas," Yu admits. His gaze lands on someone he almost hadn't seen at the back of the group, and realizes that at least one Akira--the smaller one-- _had_ ended up in this group.

And he looks so incredibly shifty that Yu is immediately convinced he's thinking of something.

"Akira?" he says.

The kid jumps. "Uh," he says. "Well, I don't think it's a _good_ idea, but I kind of... I grabbed something before we left that might make the F.O.E. want to run away?" And he pulls out a container filled with--

"Is that our cooking from last night?" Chie demands.

Akira flinches. "W-well," he says. "I heard everyone talking about how, um--"

Yu can see him starting to say the word _bad_ , and shakes his head vigorously from behind Chie's back.

"How unique it is," Akira says. "And I wanted to see for myself? Only, um..." 

Luckily for him, Chie is the only one of the girls that had come with this group, so he only has to deal with one angry glare as he takes a deep breath and continues.

"Chie," he says, looking right at her. "It smells bad."

"Oh boy," Morgana says under his breath.

"It smells _really, really bad_ ," Akira says, which Yu does not think is making things better. "And the F.O.E. _is_ going to run away from it, Chie."

At first, Yu doesn't think this is going to work. Chie looks genuinely upset, and the whole Mystery Food X thing has been a problem before now.

Then Chie sighs. "Well," she mutters. "I guess maybe that one didn't turn out exactly the way we wanted it to."

"Right," Akira says quickly. "Probably whatever you make next will be better."

"And you _did_ go into that room with all those creepy doll F.O.E.s the other day," she says. "So... maybe this time we can just..." she kicks at some dust on the floor. "Just go with your plan." And apparently that's her way of saying no hard feelings, because she doesn't protest any further as they circle back around to where the F.O.E. is, and get ready to launch a heaping serving of Mystery Food X at it. 

Morgana does the actual launching, since his slingshot is easiest weapon to load a heap of inedible food into. They find a place where they can sit and wait for the F.O.E. to run past--

And then Morgana nails it right between the eyes.

For about ten seconds, the F.O.E.--that giant monster of a Shadow, easily twice as tall as any of them--stands stock still. There's an expression of almost comical surprise on its face as food goop drips from its forehead. down its nose, and onto the tiled labyrinth floor. The F.O.E. blinks, sways, and then falls forward and disappears into nothing.

Akira bursts out laughing while the rest of them are still trying to figure out how to react--for his part, Yu isn't sure whether to be surprised, or worried about the other group that had run off, or _what_. But Akira's laughing is contagious, and soon everyone's either laughing or at least smiling. Even Zen, who Yu doesn't think he's seen smiling until now, manages something that looks slightly more friendly than his usual grimace.

"Okay everyone," Yu says, when the laughter has broken up the tension, and the other group starts heading back toward them. "Time to get going again."

-//-

_Day 7_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Akira has not been picked for any of the big fights at the ends of the labyrinths yet (well, his older self has been in all of them, but that doesn't even _count_ ). This time, though, when they get to the bottom of the Inaba Pride Exhibit and into the big, open space that practically screams _here comes a big fight_ , the two leaders have a quick, anxious consultation and then start going over to talk to the people that are going to be in the fight.

Akira isn't at _all_ expecting it when Yu comes to him. It doesn't make sense for him to be in one of these end-of-labyrinth fights, because if it comes down to a choice between him at twelve and him at sixteen, then obviously it makes sense to pick the sixteen year old with more experience. It stinks, but it does make sense. They have the exact same Persona, and in a big fight with something dangerous, it just... doesn't make sense to double up and have two people with all the same attacks.

"Are you ready to fight?" Yu asks him.

"Do you _want_ me to?" Akira asks, his mouth almost dropping open in surprise. "You don't want the older me to do it?"

He doesn't _have_ to be quiet as he asks the question, but there's something about the atmosphere here that makes him feel like he should keep his voice down anyway. With each level that they've gone down in the labyrinth, it's gotten darker and heavier. The cheerful lanterns from the first floor had gotten less and less common, and even the torches that they've been running around with are gone now, on this bottom level. There's something very... heavy, to the darkness here. Akira thinks he can almost feel it on his shoulders, weighing him down.

"He's sitting this one out," Yu says, and Akira very badly wants to ask _why_ , but doesn't. After all, he wants to fight, he'd _love_ the chance to prove to everyone here (all of whom are older than him) that he can hold his own and fight just like they can. If the older him isn't going to fight, then _yes,_ absolutely he'll do it.

"Do you want to fight?" Yu asks.

"Yeah," Akira says. "I do. Thanks, Yu. I--thank you."

Yu gives him a strained smile and a kind of pat on the back, and then goes to get the rest of the group. It's going to be Yu, Akira, Yosuke, Yukiko, and Morgana. Zen, Akira notices, _wants_ to fight, but Yu shoots this down so fast that it's almost rude. 

"There's definitely something going on there," Morgana mutters, crossing his arms (paws? Akira knows he doesn't want to be called a cat, but he clearly doesn't have hands, so...?).

"What," Akira says. "With Zen and Rei and Yu?"

"Yeah," Morgana says. He narrows his eyes in that direction. "It's just really weird. _And_ Yu's been jumpy ever since we got in here yesterday."

"Maybe he's just nervous about what's going to happen, since this is the last labyrinth."

"Maybe," Morgana says, sounding unconvinced. "But then why is he _only_ worried about those two?"

This is a good point, Akira has to admit, but it doesn't seem like it would be a good idea to ask right now, when they're just about to fight. So instead he stays quiet as they push forward, into the end of the labyrinth where the fight is going to be, and find... Rei. A Shadow Rei, Akira assumes, since she's obviously a double of the one still standing next to Zen. The Shadow is dressed in a hospital gown, holding a stuffed rabbit that looks just like the one they'd seen at the bottom of the first labyrinth. 

"Zen..." Rei whispers, and even though she's all the way at the back of the group, it carries. "Zen, I want to go back, I'm scared."

"What--what _is_ that?" Ann asks. 

"It's probably her Shadow," Yosuke says. "You guys didn't have to face yours, right?"

"We definitely didn't," Ryuji says.

"I've seen it, though," Morgana says. "Once. And it was--"

"Reeeeeally crazy," Futaba finishes for him. "But if Rei's Shadow is here, does that mean she's going to be able to get a Persona too? If she accepts it?"

"Maybe," Yu says. "Or maybe this is when--" He cuts off, and shakes his head.

"Don't come near," the Shadow says, in Rei's voice.

The real Rei whimpers, and Akira glances back to see that she's holding tight to Zen's arm. 

"Why..." the Shadow speaks again, but she's staring off into nothing, barely even seeming to realize that any of the rest of them are there. "Why was I even born?"

Something about the way she says it makes Akira shiver. He's seen a few Shadows now, his and Yusuke's and even Daiki's, and all of those Shadows had done a lot more taunting than Rei's is now. Hers just seems... lost.

"Why was I even born?" she asks again, and then suddenly her eyes snap upward to look at all of them. They're wide and scared and the bright golden color that Shadow eyes always are. "Don't come near!" she says, and her voice is such a complicated mix of anger and fear that it hurts to hear it. "Don't!"

"Let's just leave!" the real Rei says. "I don't want to be here, I don't want to--to talk to it..."

"But it's you," Akira says.

"Akira," Yu says, low and urgent. " _Don't_."

"That's not me," Rei says. "It's not, it _can't_ be."

Oh, Akira thinks. Right. That's... probably something he should have figured would happen. But it's too late to take back what he'd said now, too late to stop Rei's denial of her other self. The Shadow starts to grow, merging with the stuffed rabbit she's holding, until finally some kind of giant, mutant rabbit thing towers over them from the other side of the room.

"Sorry," Akira says, in a small voice.

"It's okay," Yu says. "We just--need to beat it fast. Before anyone gets hurt."

They fight. And it's _hard_. Most of them go down at least once, but Yukiko and Morgana had both come into the fight with _samerecarm_ and they keep the rest of them on their feet. Slowly, way _too_ slowly, the five of them whittle down the Shadow's health. 

"You guys are almost there!" Rise says. "One more push and you got it!"

Yukiko attacks with a sudden burst of fire, and then Yosuke makes an attack with his daggers that sends the Shadow skidding back with a howl. And then Akira goes, but _just_ at the wrong moment. The rabbit, in one last, desperate attack, manages to get in a swipe at him that knocks him off his feet and knocks the wind out of him, leaving him gasping raggedly for breath.

Yu manages the last shot at the Shadow, a desperate feeling _ziodyne,_ and it dissolves all at once back into the copy of Rei wearing the hospital gown. She's shaking slightly now, and looks a little paler than she had before.

"Why was I even born?" the Shadow asks. "Why was I even born, if all I was going to do was be _sick_ and _suffer_ and _die_?"

"Make it stop!" the real Rei cries out. "Make it stop, Zen, _please!_ "

"Rei," Zen says. "Rei, you have to--"

" _That's not me!_ " she says, around heavy sobs. "That can't be me, it isn't me!"

The Shadow looks at her for a long moment, and then... just vanishes. Just suddenly goes up in dark smoke, and is gone. Behind her, where they hadn't been able to see it before because she'd been standing just in front of it, is one last chest.

Zen moves forward, his footsteps the only sound in the heavy darkness. The whole rest of the group watches him in silence, even Rei, who has not stopped crying but is doing it silently now, like the weight of what she's feeling is too much to even manage to make a sound. Akira looks over his shoulder at her, at where Haru has leaned over to try and offer comfort, and then turns his attention back to Zen as he opens the box. He reaches in, and comes out with a slip of paper in his hand.

"What is it?" Yu asks. He sounds quiet, and... afraid.

"A funeral note," Zen says. His voice carries, in a way that Yu's hadn't. "It says..."

"Don't read it, Zen," Rei whimpers. " _Please..."_

"To Niko," Zen says, his eyes still on the note. "Please rest in peace. Love, Yuki."

A funeral note, Akira thinks, as something tense and painful settles gripping his chest. _Why was I even born, if all I was going to do was die?_ And Niko... that had been the name on the rabbit in the first labyrinth. The one... the one that Zen said belonged to Rei.

"I remember, now," Zen says quietly. "I remember everything."

Akira tries to stand up but can't--he's too tired and too hurt, and only manages to get up as far as being on one knee. A part of him has picked up on what's happening, even as he can't quite bring himself to think it. But there are tears in his eyes, because--

_All I was going to do was die..._

Someone puts their hands on his shoulders, maybe trying to comfort him, but it doesn't make a dent in the sadness and surprise and _fear_ that feel suddenly like they're filling him up from the inside. It's a familiar mix of feelings, but not one that he'd ever wanted to feel again.

(He'd felt like this when he'd learned that his parents had died)

"Zen," says the older Akira. "Zen, whatever just happened, you have to tell us--"

"Rei is dead," Zen says bluntly. "She's already dead."

Somehow, the confirmation hits him like a physical blow. Akira sucks in a quick breath and can't stop himself from whimpering. The person with their hands on his shoulders gives a small squeeze and Akira turns to see Yukiko. She's obviously trying to hide her own sudden sadness, but it's not hard to see past it.

"Let's get back upstairs," Yu says. "We can talk where it's safer."

" _Diarama,"_ Yukiko says quietly, and that helps get Akira back on his feet, but...

But Rei is dead.

And then suddenly Rei makes a wordless noise of deep, _unspeakable_ pain, and takes off running.

The rest of them pause, just for a heartbeat or two, and then all together they take off running. They chase her out of the labyrinth, out of the _school_ , and out to the yard outside. To the clocktower, the one that isn't there in the real world, where she stops and stares up at it like it _means_ something to her.

"Zen," the older Akira says quietly, as the rest of them slow, and try to figure out how to approach. "What's going on, exactly?"

"I was the one that took Rei's memories," Zen says. "And now I'm going to give them back. It's--time."

He moves forward, slowly, alone. Akira watches as he comes up close to Rei, and touches her gently on the forehead.

"Does..." Akira squirms. "Does _anyone_ know what's going on here?"

"No," Yu says. "But we're going to find out." He gestures for everyone to follow them and of course no one wants to stay behind, so all of them go cautiously toward where Rei is now standing, looking shell shocked and numb.

"Zen!" Yu calls. "Can you tell us a little more? Can you... can you explain any of this?"

"Yes," Zen says. "I'm sorry for making this so difficult, but it--" He looks even less happy, Akira thinks, than he ever has before. "But it _is_ difficult."

And he tells them his story, then and there. About how he had once been someone called Chronos, whose job was to collect the dead and help them move on. One day he'd come to the soul of a girl named Niko, who said nothing when he told her that she was dead, and that it was time to move on.

He'd been curious; he'd wanted to see if he could make her say something. He'd brought her to a copy of the school she'd wanted so badly to attend, but had never been able to because she'd been sick for her whole life, because she'd lived in a hospital for years before he died.

("Oh no," Haru says softly at this point. " _Niko_...")

Rei had broken down at this point, at being given the chance to see what she'd missed. She's sobbed and demanded to know why she'd even been born, why she'd had to live at all, and then tried to gouge her own eyes out. In a panic, Zen--or Chronos--had taken her memories. More than just her memories, he'd taken his own, too. He'd sealed Rei's away in the fake school he'd created, and split himself into two. One half with his memories, called Chronos, locked away in the clocktower on the school grounds. The other half, the Zen that they all know now, with no memories. He'd given them both new names. Rei had been called Niko when she was alive, and she'd hated it. He'd called her Rei instead, and named himself Zen.

He'd left himself with no memories at all, only the desire to give Rei an answer to her question.

_Why had she lived at all?_

"The labyrinths grew up around Rei's possessions because of her fear of remembering," Zen says. "Because without her memories, she could be happy. But none of that could last forever, and that is how all of you came to be here."

"And what do we have to do with all this?" Yu asks.

"That other half of me has decided that it's time for me to resume my duties," Zen says. "To move Rei's soul along, and then to have me return to him. He knew that all of you would be able to fight through the labyrinths. He knew that we would get--here."

"So what happens now?" Akira asks. "You did all this to help Rei find out what the point of her life was, but you don't have the answer yet, do you?"

"I... do not," Zen says.

"So you can't just let her go," Akira insists. "You care about her, so you can't--"

The conversation is interrupted by a sudden, terrified scream from Rei. Everyone has been focused on Zen during his story but now they turn, and see that Rei has broken out of the stupor she's been in ever since Zen returned her memories. She's staring straight upward, and she looks terrified.

Akira looks up, and his stomach drops as he sees some kind of giant spider crawling down the wall of the tower toward her.

Someone curses.

"What the--"

"Chronos," Zen whispers. 

His other half, Akira understands this to mean.

" _Zen!"_ Rei shouts, reaching toward him even as the spider grabs her. " _Zen_!"

But even though Zen jumps toward her immediately, even though _all_ of them do--

Not one of them is fast enough. By the time they get to the base of the tower, both the spider and Rei are gone.

-//-

_Day 7_

_Evening_

-//-

The next few hours are chaotic, and Akira experiences them as if he's standing in the middle of a very thick fog, and the only thought going through his mind, the entire time, is _I remembered it wrong._

Or not _wrong_ , exactly. Every detail of the memory he'd gotten back when he first saw Zen and Rei had been correct, it had just been... missing some critical context. 

Rei is already dead. She had already been dead before they ever met her. Going by the dates in the old grade book that Haru pulls out and shows the rest of them, she'd already been dead _before Akira was even born_. There was never anything that any of them could have done to save her.

"I'm sorry," Akira says, when he tracks Yu down to the roof late that night. Yu's there with the younger Akira, who looks as upset and depressed as Akira can remember being after that revelation in the labyrinth. Maybe this isn't a conversation that he should be having in front of his younger self, but... maybe it doesn't matter now. Maybe he's just too tired to worry about that. "I remembered _one_ thing, and I got it completely wrong."

"You _remembered_ thi?" the smaller Akira asks. "And you didn't say anything to the rest of us?"

"I talked to Zen and Rei about it," Akira says. "After that, it felt like it should be up to them if anyone else found out."

"But you still remembered," his younger self says.

"I thought Rei was going to die here in the labyrinth," Akira explains. _Tries_ to explain. "I didn't..."

"It's okay," Yu says. "You thought she was in danger, and you tried to help her. Nothing you did made what happened in that labyrinth any worse than it would have been if you'd done nothing."

The three of them are quiet for a little while. The younger Akira, who is the only one sitting, leans forward and wraps his arms around his knees. "What's going to happen now?" he asks the other two, after several minutes. "What's going to happen to Rei?"

Akira takes a breath. That's really why he's come up here, after all. Yu had taken his younger self up here right after the scene at the clocktower--the kid had been more upset than anyone else at what they'd seen (other than possibly Zen, who's as hard to read as ever). Akira thinks is fair, for someone younger than all the rest of them, who had lost his parents so recently, and isn't ready to see anyone else die right now.

(Or maybe he's just biased)

(Maybe, it's hard to look at what seems increasingly like a sad, Akira-shaped lump on the ground, and feel some of that hopelessness seeping into him, too)

But that means that both of them have missed everything that's been happening downstairs over the past few hours, everything that Lavenza and Margaret had explained, and everything else that Zen had told them.

"We have two choices," he says quietly, looking more at Yu than at his younger self. "If we go up through the clocktower after Rei, there's a chance that we can rescue her, and... and if we can figure something out, maybe Zen will have that chance to give Rei her answer."

_Why did I have to be born at all? What was the point of my life?_

It's going to be a long time before he can shake the sound of the _pain_ in her voice out of his memory.

"But it's going to be more dangerous than anything else we've done so far," Akira continues. "And if we don't make it..." he hesitates, but they definitely need to know what Zen had explained. "Chronos is... Chronos is _time_ , you know?" Which probably explains why time is so frozen here, why the sun is still fixed stubbornly overhead even though all their phones say it's well past sundown. "So if this doesn't work, we won't just die. We would never have existed at all."

"What's the other choice?" Yu asks, frowning.

"All the locks are off the doors now," Akira says. "We can just go home."

"And leave Zen and Rei here?" his younger self asks. "We can't do that. We can't just... _leave_ them."

"That's what the rest of us downstairs are saying," Akira says. "Everyone wants to go after Rei, and give Zen the chance to talk to her again. And I think that's what we _should_ do." He looks himself in the eye, and says, "Except for you."

"What?" The younger Akira jumps up, face suddenly on fire with a fierce, unexpected passion that seems to completely transform him from the sad kid he'd been thirty seconds ago. "I'm not going to be the only one that leaves. I'm _not!_ "

"It's not that I don't think you can keep up," Akira says, because he doesn't remember the labyrinths but he _does_ remember what it had been like to be twelve, and struggling to keep up with the Investigation Team. "I know exactly what you can do, and I'm sure you can keep up." When he was twelve and in Inaba, he hadn't been able to stand toe to toe with Yu and the Investigation Team, but in here they'd all started on a level playing field. Because the labyrinths had brought their Persona back to the basics, because they'd had to build their strength back up together, even the younger Akira had been able to keep pace with everyone else.

"Then why do you want me to leave?" his younger self demands. His whole body has gone tense like an overstretched wire, hands curled into fists. " _Why?"_

"Because I don't know what happens if one of us stops existing," Akira tells him. "But it feels like it would be a lot more dangerous with two of us here than it would be for anyone else. You--"

"That's not a good enough reason," his younger self interrupts. "Okay? I'm _not_. What if--what if I _did_ go home, and then you stopped existing here? I'd be gone anyway, and I wouldn't even know why. Or--" he flinches, slightly. "Or if you make it, but what if... what if Yu doesn't? I could wake up tomorrow, and be alone, and not even... not even know that anyone's missing." 

Akira winces a little, too. He can... yeah. He can understand why the idea of that would be terrifying. It still _is_ terrifying, actually, and that fear seep into him for a second before he can stop it. They might not all make it out of this. It's _not_ impossible that when the Phantom Thieves go back to Tokyo, that there might be people missing that they don't even remember to mourn.

It's not impossible that it might be Yu, and Akira has no idea where he'd be in his life if Yu had never been in it. Or he could lose Yusuke, his _best_ friend, or Futaba who's like a sister.

He understands why his younger self would think that losing the memory of Yu, of not even being able to fight for that, would be worse than staying here and just dying.

Small Akira keeps going. "I'm not going to just go home and wait," he says. "I'm going to _stay_ , and keep fighting for Rei, and for all of us to _keep existing_. If anyone's going to go after Rei, and keep fighting, then all of us have to."

Yu makes a little noise. "Well," he says. "I was going to say that it was a good point about you going home, but... after all that, I think I have to change my mind." He looks down for a second, then up again, meeting Akira's eyes. "We all came into this together. I think we do all have to see it through to the end."

"Yeah," Akira admits, and sees the way his younger self seems to straighten slightly, some of his tension fading as he sees that his argument had worked, making room for a new confidence settling in.

"So do I," Akira tells Yu. He takes a deep breath, and turns to go back inside. "Come on," he says. "It's too late to go to the tower tonight, so we're going to get some sleep and head out early." From their position on the roof, he can see the top of the clocktower clearly, and he looks out at it now. "We have no idea _what_ we're going to find in there."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep feeling like the whole 'never existed in the first place' issue wasn't really addressed well enough in the game itself. Like, that is a huge deal, that some of these people could just never have existed at all! There are a lot of possible implications to that, and obviously there's a ton of other things going on, but just... I don't know, I wanted to give Akira a chance to get good and freaked out about it :p


	25. Persona Q - Part 7 (End)

_Day 8_

_Early Morning_

-//-

Akira doesn't sleep well that night. He'd told Yu and his older self that he wants to stay, and he _does_ , but...

But he's upset and scared and he hadn't even known Rei all that well, really? But she'd died, and she'd been so--so terrified of it. She'd hated the idea of being dead so much, and Akira wakes up early, after a night of tossing and turning, and wonders whether either of his parents had felt like that.

He squirms out of his sleeping bag at a time that his phone says is a little past three in the morning, and goes to find Lavenza.

She's up in the Velvet Room with her sister when he finds her, the two of them talking about something that they obviously don't want Akira to hear, since they go quiet as soon as they see him. 

"Hi," he says, hugging his arms over his chest and trying not to shrink down into himself too much. He doesn't want to be alone right now, and everyone else is asleep. "Am I interrupting something?"

They give each other the kind of wordless look that Akira only ever really sees with siblings, then Lavenza shakes her head and stands up. "No," she tells him. "We can talk more later. What's wrong?"

"I just, um..." He can feel tears that he's been choking back for hours now threatening to leak out. "Can we go talk somewhere?"

She nods, and the two of them head together to a far corner of the school, where it's a little quieter, and they can sit side by side on the floor, pressed together against the wall, and talk.

"I think I've heard most of what happened in the labyrinth and by the tower today," Lavenza says. "Is that what's bothering you?"

"No," Akira says. "Not... exactly." He sighs. "Yes?"

"Well which is it, Trickster?" she asks, and even though there's a teasing smile in her voice, Akira doesn't mind it. She doesn't sound like she's laughing at him. "Yes, no, or not exactly?"

"I've been thinking about what it's like to die," Akira tells her.

"Ah," she says quietly. The smile fades.

"I don't know what happened to my parents," he says. "I mean, I know they were in a car accident, but I don't know if they died right away, or if it took time, or if--I don't even know if they were taken to a hospital and died there."

Lavenza reaches out and takes his hand. Akira squeezes it, and he's not even thinking about the stupid Group Date Cafe. He's just thinking that she's his friend, she's _his friend_ , from his time and not the future, the only person here who had known him, all of him, Akira and Trickster together, before they got here. 

"What if they didn't want to die?" he asks. "What if they didn't want it just like Rei didn't want it?" He doesn't want to think about them being scared like that, and ever since he found out about what happened to them, he's tried to make himself feel better by telling himself that... maybe it went fast. Maybe they didn't have time to know what was coming. Maybe it hadn't hurt.

Everything that had happened today makes that harder to believe.

"Rei said--her Shadow kept asking why she even had to be born," Akira says. "If she was only going to die at the end, why did she even have to be born? What if... my parents felt like that too?"

"They didn't feel like that," Lavenza says.

"You don't know how they felt," Akira says. "We _can't_ know." And that's what's so scary. The fact that he's never going to find out what happened. There aren't any answers, just that lingering doubt.

"No," Lavenza says. "But it sounds like... Rei was sick, when she was alive. She was sick, and she couldn't ever do the things she wanted to do. Your parents were different. They did something that made their lives worthwhile, before they died."

"How do you know _that_?" Akira asks. She knows a lot about him, but she's never even seen his parents.

"Because I know that they had you," Lavenza says. "And they loved you, didn't they?"

Akira nods, his throat too tight from holding back tears to risk trying to talk. 

"Then it isn't the same thing as what happened to Rei," Lavenza tells him. "They did at least one thing that gave their life meaning. And I don't know if that's enough. I don't know what else they had in their lives, or what they did, or what they _wanted_ to do."

Neither does Akira. He knows the kinds of things that... that kids know about their parents, how they acted when they were with him and what they chose to tell him about themselves. But he doesn't know what their lives had been like before him, or when he wasn't around. He doesn't know what they'd wanted, if they'd been happy. He knows them as _parents_ and not as _people_. He doesn't know if Lavenza's right, that having him would have been enough.

But he knows that he's happy she'd said it.

"You're going to stay and fight," she says. "Aren't you?"

"Yeah," he says. "I can't leave now."

"You could."

"I _won't_."

And she nods. "I didn't think you'd have said anything else," she tells him. 

He nods. "I don't think that _I've_ done anything with my life yet," he says slowly. "I haven't done anything yet that would make _my_ life worth it. And if we mess up here, that means that I never existed. I don't want to die without having done anything that matters, I want..." These words are so _hard_ and so _heavy_ , but they feel like they're important to say. "I want to fight to keep existing," he tells Lavenza. "For all of us to keep existing." He feels her hand in his, and it feels real. It feels like being alive, like existing, like deciding for himself that he's going to take another breath in, and another, and go on living as long as he can.

"I don't want to die here," he tells Lavenza quietly.

"You're too much trouble to die just yet," she assures him.

"I want to make it back home," he says. "And before then, I want... if I can, I want to see Rei again. I don't know if there's anything I can think of that will help her to feel... okay about all of this. We're all fighting for her, so that has to mean something, right?"

"I think it does," Lavenza says. "The question is... what's going to mean something to _her_?"

Akira doesn't answer. He doesn't _know_ the answer.

"You might not figure it out," Lavenza says. "Maybe that's not your role in this. Maybe it's someone else that's going to be able to help her. But you're thinking about it, at least."

"It's hard," Akira says. "I don't _want_ to think about... about dying and all that, but..."

Lavenza nods.

"Do you guys...?" He swallows. "You guys in the Velvet Room, do you die like we do?"

For a long time, he thinks she isn't going to answer. Then she squeezes his hand a little more firmly, and says, "There's something I want to talk to you about. Something I learned from you in the future about what's happening there."

He waits for her to continue, and eventually she does. Haltingly, and with a tremor in her voice that Akira has never heard before.

"All living things die," she says. "If you don't die, you can't really live. But my siblings and I--all of us from the Velvet Room, we live so long, we count time and life so differently, that I've never... I've never been afraid of it before. But then I found out that in the future, I'm... not there."

Akira stares at her. This is not the news he wants to hear right now. "What do you mean that you're not there?" he asks. "Why would you not be there?"

"I don't know," she says, and he can see her fear at the words. "I don't _know_ , because there could be a lot of reasons, but--one of them could be that I'm dead by then. None of the other options are much better. And I have never been _afraid_ before, not the way I am now, that I'm going to die."

"I'm afraid you're going to die too," Akira says. "I don't want--"

For the first time, he's glad that he's going to forget all the things that are happening here. He doesn't want to _know_ this, and a big part of him is sorry that he'd asked.

(He'd asked because she thought she'd say no. He'd asked because he'd thought she'd tell him that maybe she would die, but it wouldn't be during his life)

(He'd wanted to hear that there's someone he cares about that won't ever leave him like that, but... maybe that's just not how life is)

And now she's afraid. Or maybe now she's letting him see the fear for the first time. Akira looks at her, and then he looks away. "Lavenza, you know... everything you were saying about my parents. About how they did something that gave their lives meaning?"

She nods.

"I don't know what you were doing before this year," Akira says. "Or how long you've been doing it, or anything. But I know that you've changed my life since you've been here." His face feels warm. "So... so from my point of view, I'm glad you lived."

-//-

Lavenza sits with Akira until their conversation peters out, and he eventually falls asleep sitting next to her.

She's thinking about death, and life, and she's thinking about them in ways that she never has before. Not in the abstract, not as something to be observed, but as something vibrant and valuable and worth keeping. Both of them. Both life and death.

She's lived a long time, for whatever value time has inside the Velvet Room. But it has taken her this long, has taken this particular Trickster, to show her what would make her life worth living. If she's going to die in the next five years--and she's not completely convinced that she won't, after what she's heard of the future--it's going to be times like this that will make her feel like she's lived at all. Not the whole length of time spent in the Velvet Room, but...

Someone she cares about.

(She thinks about being called to him in the labyrinth, and about what the... what the look of that place had meant to him, as a human)

(She thinks about how she feels about it herself)

-//-

_Day 8_

_Morning_

-//-

The mood in the group is somber as they gather in front of the clocktower in the morning. Yu looks around at the assembled team, and isn't actually sure that anyone had managed more than a few hours of sleep. The twelve year old Akira had left sometime very early in the morning and not come back (they find him with Lavenza in one of the hallways, later), and Yosuke had walked out with Ann at about 6:30 (the two of them end up on the roof having a surprisingly serious conversation about Saki Konishi and someone called Shiho). It seems like suddenly they're all thinking about... living. And about dying, or suddenly not existing at all.

It's heavy. It's a _lot,_ and none of them had expected to have to deal with this. They're not ready for it, in any way, but they're doing their best, and even after the restless night they've had they still show up to fight.

"I wonder if this is how Rei felt when she was alive," Haru says. "I wonder if she used to just sit around and think about all these things."

"It sounds like that's _all_ she was thinking about," Kanji mutters. Like everyone else, he's upset, but for him that hides behind an expression of being generally pissed off. "All that stuff her Shadow said about not knowing why she had to be alive, and whatever. I bet she thought about this a lot."

Yu turns, standing just in front of the door to the clock tower, and looks at the fifteen or so people grouped together around him. "Listen," he says. "We all know why we're doing this. We're going in here to try and save Rei, and that's... kind of a hard thing to wrap your head around since she's already dead." How do you save someone that's gone beyond what it usually means to be saved? Sure, they can rescue her from the spider that had pulled her up to the top of this tower, but she's not going home with them. She can't.

"But she died thinking that her life didn't matter," Yu says. "And I know that all of us have gotten to know her over the past week, and even if we don't know her _well_ , we know that she's..." He trails off, not sure how to put into words what he's feeling. "She was a part of the team, this week," he says at last. "We didn't know her long, but she mattered, this week, to us. And that's what I mean when I say that we need to find a way to save her."

He takes a second to look at every single face in front of him, checking to make sure that everyone is completely on board with this. He wouldn't blame them if they weren't. He wouldn't blame them if they weren't ready to face something that _is_ , after all, a little more real and a lot harder than what they usually do in labyrinths or the TV World or those Palaces of the future.

But everyone's on board. There's not even a flicker of hesitation on a single face in front of him.

"We're going in," he says, and turns around to lead the way inside.

From the beginning, this labyrinth is different from the others. All the others, they know now, had been born out of Rei's subconscious desire to not remember her own death, _or_ the life before it that she sees as being so meaningless. They had all been based on her, in some tough to describe way. 

This labyrinth isn't anything like Rei at all. It's cold, and precise, all hard stone and perfectly aligned gears, and in a way that makes it feel like humans were never meant to be here. It's cold and alien and uncomfortable even on the first few floors, where the Shadows are still relatively manageable.

And then they get to the higher levels, where they see something that makes Akira curse for a solid twenty seconds at the sight of it.

(The younger Akira, hearing this, looks torn between looking shocked and wanting to laugh)

"What's wrong with you?" Yu asks.

"That's a Reaper" Akira says.

"A what?"

"A _Reaper_ ," Akira repeats. "You haven't run into that yet?"

"No," Yu says. "What is it?"

"I guess that must have been later that you guys ran into it," Akira mutters, watching the dark robed Shadow prowling around the labyrinth hall ahead of them. "What you need to know, basically, is that they're strong, they're terrifying, they're _apparently_ everywhere, because I know they're in Mementos and the TV World too. And you need to know that we don't have a chance at beating this thing."

"Hang on," Futaba says. "Isn't this the thing Yu ran into in Mementos, and you were geeking out because he fought it himself?"

Yu turns slightly red. So does Akira, for that matter.

"He _held it off_ by himself," Akira corrects. "Not _fought it_ by himself. And that was, you know, five years in the future." He makes a face. "And also I definitely didn't geek about it."

"You did a little bit," Futaba says.

"You're the worst," he mutters, which just makes her snicker. "Seriously, though," he toes on. "I've never had to fight a Reaper, but I've heard about them, and they just--we definitely don't want to fight this thing."

They find out soon enough that this is true, because the Reaper is fast and can fly over the open spaces in the floor that the rest of them can't get over. While they're going the long way around, the Reaper makes a beeline straight toward them, and they fight.

("Fight")

They _run away_ , is what they do, because it's immediately obvious that Akira had not been exaggerating when he told them how dangerous this thing is. If anything, he hadn't understood it completely himself--Yu sees his reaction at the Reaper's first attack, and it's very nearly as overwhelmed and surprised as everyone else. 

They run from the Reaper, and stop as soon as they're actually, definitely out of sight. 

"Okay," Yu says, panting. "New plan, navigators--your most important job right now is to watch that thing and make sure we never, ever run into it again."

"Got it," Rise says, sounding a little shaken herself.

"Yeah," Futaba agrees, without any of the expected sarcasm.

So, Reapers.

_Bad._

_-//-_

_Day 8_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Akira has never even heard of Reapers before, and he's kind of happy that his older self is obviously facing them for the first time, too. That means he has at _least_ until he's sixteen before he's ever going to have to fight one again, and that's a definite relief.

The clock tower has more floors than any of the other labyrinths they've been through so far. The first several had been small and easy to get through, and they race through them without slowing down too much. But as they get up higher, and the floors get larger, and the Reaper starts tracking them more relentlessly, progress slows down.

Akira is definitely getting tired. He hadn't slept too well the night before, and he'd fought Rei's Shadow yesterday, and then today there's been a lot of climbing up and down stairs. 

(It doesn't help, although he'll never say this out loud, that he's also the youngest one here)

(His legs are short! It's not his fault, and Morgana, who is _also_ short, is having a hard time too)

So the point is that by the eighth floor, he ends up lagging behind most of the rest of the group, still walking with them, just... at the back. Zen's there too, most of the time, not talking much to anyone. Akira wonders if that's because Rei's gone, or because he knows who he is now. Either one feels like it would give him plenty to think about, honestly.

"Um," Akira says, after the two of them have walked together in absolute silence for a little while. "Are you doing okay, Zen?"

"I have a lot to think about," Zen tells him. "I am... still trying to decide what I am going to say to Rei when I see her again. I don't think that I am the right person to tell her why she lived."

"Why not?" Akira asks. "You knew her better than anyone, it sounds like."

"I did _not_ know her," Zen says, and sounds frustrated by this reality. "I only met her after she had died, and I was the one that took her memories away from her. How can you say I knew her at all?"

"Because... I don't know. She didn't stop being Rei just because she's not..." He squirms a little. "Just because she's not an alive Rei. And it sounds like she didn't really get a chance to be the kind of person she wanted to be, while she was alive. So when everything that she was so scared of was taken away--all the time you were both stuck here together, maybe that _is_ when she got to be the most herself."

Zen doesn't say anything. Akira doesn't think he's being ignored, though, he just thinks Zen is taking his time in thinking.

How long have Zen and Rei been here? Twelve years, ever since she died? Twelve years, and nothing changing, and then all of a sudden all the rest of them have shown up here, and maybe Zen just isn't used to that much change and this many people.

"People die all the time," Zen says at last. "But Rei was different."

Akira frowns. He's starting to think that Zen might actually, like... _like_ Rei.

"You know," he says hesitantly. "I was talking to Lavenza earlier, because what happened to Rei made me think about my parents dying a couple years ago. And she said... that their life had meaning because--" It feels weird to be talking about this with Zen instead of Lavenza, but he wants to _help_ so he just keeps going. "Because they had me in their life, so that was someone to... to care about. That gave their life meaning. And I think maybe... even if it took until after she died, Rei had you in her life."

"Is that enough reason to live?" Zen asks. He doesn't look or sound like he's laughing at any of this, which makes Akira feel a little bit better.

"Maybe," Akira says. "I don't know. I think probably only Rei knows." He for sure doesn't--he's in _so_ far over his head in this conversation that he barely even knows what to say. "But maybe you can tell her all that, when you see her again, and... and see if it'll help."

"Maybe I will," Zen says thoughtfully. Then suddenly he turns his head, and asks, "Do you see that?"

"See wh..." Akira stops halfway through the question, because he actually does see it, now that he's looking. There's something bright blue struggling in the corner of a hallway they're passing. "It's a butterfly!" he says, voice rising a little out of sheer surprise and curiosity. "And it looks like it's stuck in a spiderweb?"

There _are_ a bunch of spiderwebs around here, because a lot of the F.O.E.s in this labyrinth have been giant spiders bigger than Akira is tall. And, inconveniently, there's one right in front of the web where the butterfly is trapped.

"Do spiders eat butterflies?" Akira asks uncertainly, peering down the hall toward the spider and butterfly.

"I have no idea," Zen says. "But I think that a spider that big can eat whatever it chooses to eat."

Good point, Akira thinks. He glances for a second up toward where the rest of the group has disappeared around the corner, then back to where the butterfly is struggling. They've definitely been left behind by the rest of the group now, who don't seem to have noticed that the two of them have stopped.

"I think we should rescue it," Zen says, and Akira looks up at him, surprised.

"You do?" he asks.

Zen nods, very slowly. "I don't think I would have cared," he says. "Before I knew Rei, I would have thought that this was simply the time chosen for this butterfly to die. But now I think--I think that I would like to see it live."

Akira grins. "Then you can tell that to Rei too, when you see her again," he says. "Tell her that you got to change because you met her. And that you wanted to save a butterfly for her." Then he turns his attention back to the spider, the web, and the butterfly.

(He can't look at it and not think of Lavenza. She always wears that butterfly clip in her hair, it had been her codename when they rescued Daiki with Yusuke and Teddie)

"I think we would have to fight the spider to get to the butterfly," Zen says. "Which means we would have to go and find the others."

"Nah," Akira says. "I think I can get past that." The spiderweb itself is a couple feet off the ground, with the spider sitting on the right side of the hall, close to the front. The butterfly is behind it, still struggling against the webbing. "There's enough space underneath for me to crawl through," Akira says. "And as long as the F.O.E. doesn't see me, and I'm careful not to get stuck, I think I can cut that part of the web out in the back, so the butterfly can get out and fly up over the spider."

"Are you sure?" Zen asks.

"No," Akira says. "But I'm gonna go find out."

He doesn't give Zen a chance to argue, although he's not sure that Zen actually would. Anyone else? Sure. But Zen's kind of weird, and he just volunteers to watch the hall for more Shadows while Akira goes after the butterfly.

They already know that this particular type of F.O.E. won't move unless someone gets actually stuck in one of its webs. Then it'll hop along its webs until it catches whoever had been unfortunate enough to get trapped there.

So as long as Akira is careful to _not_ get stuck, he'll be fine. Probably fine? He doesn't _think_ that the spider will care about him crawling around underneath, or at least he doesn't think the spider will notice. But maybe he's wrong, and if he is, then he's not sure how long he'll be able to last by himself against an F.O.E.

He sticks to the Shadows as he gets close, then gets down on the ground as flat as he can. He moves slowly and carefully under the webbing, squirming under it on his back so that he can follow the vague flash of blue from the butterfly's wings toward the place where it's trapped and struggling. When he's underneath the butterfly he stops, taking very shallow breaths because the butterfly's frantic movements are making the web move slightly up and down. And _slightly_ matters, because there's not a whole lot of space between the top of Akira's chest and the level of the webbing.

It takes some maneuvering to get his dagger free, but he manages it, and then very carefully brings it up to start cutting away at the web. The butterfly's flapping slows a little as Akira starts to work, as if it can tell that he's trying to help. That's great, because the last thing Akira wants is to accidentally cut the butterfly while he's trying to help it.

"You remind me of a friend of mine," he whispers to the butterfly. "And I'm not sure if she'd think it was nice of me to be doing this, or if she'd tell me I was stupid, but..." He starts to shrug, then remembers the web and stops himself. "I think she might tell me I was being stupid and then _also_ say that she thinks it's a good idea," he says. "I'll have to tell her later and see if I'm right."

His dagger slips through the last thread of webbing holding the butterfly in place, and for a second the blue wings are completely still.

"Go on," Akira tells it, making the smallest of shooing motions with two of his fingers. "You can get out of here now. And you can show Zen that it was worth trying to help."

The butterfly's wings start to flap again, and this time it's able to fly away. Akira watches as it gains height, going higher and higher, and then finally disappears out of his range of vision.

Then comes the awkward job of squirming out feet first from under the webs, which involves a couple of close calls but _does_ eventually work. Akira rolls over and pushes himself up, half crouching and half running back toward Zen as if that's going to help him stay hidden from the F.O.E.

"Did you see the butterfly?" he asks. "Did it get out?"

"I did," Zen confirms. "It flew past me."

"Do you think it'll make it back to the entrance?" Akira asks.

"I do not know," Zen says. He turns, looking back up the passage in what Akira knows is the direction they'd come from. "But it has a chance now. It did not have that before we saw it."

"Yeah," Akira agrees.

They're both still staring back at where the butterfly had disappeared to when Akira hears footsteps from the other end of the hall, and he turns to see that Ryuji has come running back toward them.

"Did you guys get lost or what?" he calls. "Come on!"

"Shh!" Akira hisses, as he and Zen start hurrying back to catch up with the group. "Don't be so loud, there's an F.O.E. over here!"

But not, anymore, a butterfly.

-//-

_Day 8_

_Evening_

-//-

They push all the way through the clock tower in one day.

It's not easy, and it's probably a stupid idea, but absolutely no one seems inclined to go back and rest while Rei is still trapped with Chronos.

And then finally they come to the top.

"This is it," Rise says. "If you go up this way, I can sense Rei and that spider right on the other side."

"It feels tough," Futaba adds. "Do you guys want to come back and heal up first?"

"I don't think we should," Akira says. He looks around at everyone--at Yu, at the Investigation Team, at the Phantom Thieves, at Zen and Makoto and Haru and _himself_ , twelve years old. "We have healing items. Bead chains and things. I think it'd be better to press on while we're here."

"We're _so_ close," Yukiko says. "We can't just turn around and go back."

"We're all cheering for you down here," Rise says.

"All?" Yu echoes. "It's not just the two of you?"

"Lavenza and Marie came to sit with us and see what happens," Futaba says.

"Why aren't they going to fight?" Ryuji asks.

"I don't think Marie even _can_ fight," Yu says.

Akira chooses not to comment on this. "And Lavenza only fights if she thinks we can't handle it," he says instead. That had always been the agreement in the TV World. "So I guess she thinks we can handle it."

Which, honestly? Pretty big vote of confidence, and probably explains why the younger Akira is the only one in the whole group that doesn't look nervous at all.

"Then we'll take five minutes," Yu says. "Rest up, heal anyone that needs it, and--honestly, if anyone wants to take this chance to turn around and go back, this is the time to do it. We all know what the stakes are, and they're pretty big. No one's going to think less of anyone here if they decide to sit it out."

"You're kidding, right?" Yosuke asks. "We made it this far. We're all in it to the end."

There are nods, and a few cheers, and Yu gives a grim little smile. Akira looks for Makoto and Haru, who have basically no reason at all to be here, who aren't even a part of the Phantom Thieves that they'd come in with, and who are nodding with everyone else now.

So they take their five minutes. They rest, and they heal.

And then they go to fight a giant spider.

The spider is... it's fine. It really is, even though it takes forever to get through it. The thing is tough, really tough, and it takes a lot of tight coordination to survive the fight. But they do, and the spider goes down, _and then Chronos attacks_.

Zen's other half. The part of him that hasn't been here with Rei for all this time, hasn't been learning how to be a good person. The part, it turns out, that can control time and also hit extremely hard.

It's honestly not fair. They've just fought a giant spider. They shouldn't _also_ have to fight some kind of giant clockwork, time controlling monster thing, but here they suddenly are. Still hurt, still beat up, with just barely enough time to shout out to each other who's switching out with who, so that they have some fresh fighters ready to face Chronos, instead of the same people that are already exhausted from the spider fight.

And this fight is like nothing else Akira has ever had to go through. _Maybe_ Izanami, that had been a bad fight too, but at least she hadn't actually stopped time during the middle of the fight so she could get extra attacks in on them.

Chronos does that, and whenever he does, the five of them fighting--even _Zen_ , who is Chronos's other half, and should have been able to fight that off if anyone could--are all just stuck like sitting ducks. They can't fight, they can't move, they aren't even aware of what's happening. It just feels like suddenly, in a single second, they're being _pummeled_ with attack after attack.

So far, they're staying on their feet. Mostly. But it's a close thing, because Chronos hits hard, and they're already tired from the first fight, and there's just something disorienting about the way that time is twisted and knotted up here.

"Fall back!" Yu shouts. "I think he's doing the time--" He's breathing hard and unevenly, and is bleeding heavily from somewhere that Akira can't even see. "The time... _thing_."

Akira braces, because what else _can_ they do, except put up the best guard that they can and hope that it's enough for everything Chronos is about to hit them with? So he guards against an attack he won't even be able to see coming, and hopes that it's enough.

-//-

The younger Akira has never been so happy about _not_ being in a fight. He's absolutely convinced that he can do this, and keep up with everyone else, and fight just as well as they can, but Chronos is easily the most terrifying thing he's ever seen in his life. He's perfectly fine with knowing he doesn't have to fight that thing for another five years.

Over and over again, he watches Chronos freeze the team. He watches the giant clock monster just _stop_ the fighters, then take its time attacking and attacking and attacking, before time starts up again, and all those attacks connect at once.

"We should be able to do something," he says. Stupid and useless, because _everyone_ knows that they should be able to do something, but none of them dares to get any closer to Chronos' weird little time bubble. Kanji for sure had been all ready to run in there and start smashing things, but both navigators had screamed at him in the same second to stay back.

"There's stuff going on _inside_ the time bubble," Rise says. Her voice is so high from nerves that it almost hurts Akira's ears. "And stuff going on _outside_ , and you don't want to--you do not want to go from one to the other right now."

"So we can't do anything?" Ryuji asks. "It's just up to that five?"

"Yes!" Futaba says. "So stay where you are and let us focus on helping _them!_ "

Ryuji grumbles, his eyes fixed on the fight in front of them.

Akira completely understands how he's feeling. The feeling of watching other people fight, and struggle, and to not be able to do anything to help, is excruciating. There are so many of them here, and in the end it had all come down to the handful that had been able to get close enough to fit inside Chronos's time bubble.

Chronos freezes the team again, just like he has half a dozen times already, and Akira is just so... he's so _mad!_ This is cheating, and if anyone is going to cheat, he wants it to be him.

The attacks rain down on everyone inside the time bubble as time starts to move again, and Yu calls for everyone to take the chance and attack. And they manage to actually do some damage to the thing, but it puts them off balance and the next time Chronos freezes time, it's before anyone has a chance to get their guard up. They're frozen halfway through attacks, halfway through summoning Persona, not at all ready for what's about to happen to them.

Akira stares at his older self, trapped inside the time bubble. He can see one hand coming up to pull off his mask, _just_ on the edge of summoning his Persona. And the thing is...

The thing is that Akira can kind of _feel_ that, too. He can kind of feel the tingling, expectant moment that always comes just in the second that he tears off his mask and calls his Persona. Maybe it's because time is so _weird_ , this close to the bubble. It would have to be, right? After all those times Chronos has stopped and started time inside it? And that's _him_ , standing inside the bubble, summoning Arsene. Even if it's him from the future, _it's still him_ , and to someone like Chronos, what does five years mean, anyway?

As Chronos rears up and comes _hurtling_ down with another attack, Akira tears off his mask and shouts, " _Persona!"_

And when Arsene comes, it's not to the younger Akira standing outside the bubble. He coms to the older Akira (who _is_ the same person, _I am Thou and Thou art I_ and all that stuff, and isn't that just as true for his future self as it is for his Persona?). Arsene attacks Chronos, who had clearly not been expecting the sudden movement. And it doesn't do all that much damage, but it's enough, at least, to startle Chronos into breaking concentration and unfreezing everyone inside the time bubble.

"Uh," Futaba says. "What did you just do, Akira?"

"Um..." He thinks about it, as he watches the fight. He sort of understands it, not really but _sort_ of, which doesn't make it very easy to explain. "I think... I summoned my Persona, and Arsene just took five years to show up?"

"That doesn't make any sense," Futaba mutters.

"Never mind that," Rise says. "It worked a little bit, do you think you can do it again?"

"I'm not sure it'll be as good of a distraction the second time," Akira says. "But yeah. I can do it again."

So he spends the rest of the fight watching Chronos, tense and ready and waiting for the next time he goes in to freeze time. And he just... doesn't let Chronos get any more free attacks in. Whenever time stops, Akira shouts for Arsene, so that at least Chronos will have to deal with that instead of just getting a bunch of free attacks on the people inside the time bubble.

He is _helping._

-//-

Inside the time bubble, Akira is only vaguely aware of what his younger self is doing with his--with their--Persona. He knows that it's helping, even though he really doesn't think that either of them could have explained how it's working. 

And more importantly, it's giving him an idea. He waits, biding his time, until exactly the right moment. Until he hears his younger self calling his Persona. And so Akira, in the same moment, calls his. They shout for Arsene at the same second and, as Akira reaches for his mask he can feel his Persona responding--once from him here and now, once from the younger him of five years ago. And when the two Arsenes appear, both versions come to _him_ , inside the time bubble, standing right in front of Chronos. The two copies of the same Persona fly upward, merging together into something... into _something_ that feels strong, and powerful, and like it's finally enough to lash out at Chronos, hit him when he's least expecting it--

And in one decisive attack, finishes him.

-//-

Akira shouts and jumps up in excitement as the time bubble vanishes. His connection to his older self disappears too, but that's fine, the fight's over and they don't exactly need it anymore. He runs in through where the time bubble had been, crashing into his older self with so much enthusiasm that the resulting hug sends him stumbling back a step or two.

"See?" Akira says. "See, you would have been _so screwed_ if you'd sent me home already!"

"Yeah, yeah," the older one laughs, returning the hug for a second and then pushing him back in a half-teasing movement. "We would have figured it out."

"No way," Akira says. He's smiling so much that his face hurts. "I've been making _all_ the trouble since I got here, and you have not been holding up your end of things _at all_."

"Excuse me?" the older Akira says. He looks surprised for a second, before a laugh breaks it completely. "Did you just tell me that I haven't been making enough trouble?"

" _I'm_ the one that went into the labyrinth with Makoto the day she got a Persona," Akira says. "And I didn't see _you_ sneaking into the Evil Spirits Club in the middle of the night, _or_ \--"

"Okay, okay," his older self says, not even trying to hide his laughter. "I get it." He sobers a little. "And I figure I should say that... I should have known better than to try and keep you out of this."

Akira looks up at his older self. He doesn't know exactly why the older him had tried to send him home, but he'd seen that fight with Chronos. Maybe... maybe he'd been right to be a little worried.

And what's the point of holding a grudge against himself, anyway?

"It's okay," he says, and then grins to try and lighten the mood. He feels half giddy anyway, with the realization that Chronos is gone, and that all this is over. "But seriously, you _have_ to at least try to make some trouble while you're here, okay?"

His older self grins, looking a little sheepish. "Well," he admits. "Maybe I've been--I don't know. Trying a little too hard to show Yu that I can be a good leader too."

Akira shrugs. "We'll never be as good as him," he says.

"I know," his older self says. "But--I have to try and do my best for _him,_ right?"

...he's not wrong, Akira has to admit. If there's anyone in the world that he'd want to do his best for, it probably _is_ Yu.

Instead of saying anything, he turns and looks around, at the place on the far end of where the time bubble had been. Zen is there, kneeling in front of Rei, saying something to her. Nobody is close enough to hear what he's saying, but at the end of it Rei smiles--for the first time since she'd gotten her memories back, Akira's pretty sure--and leans forward to hug him.

He wonders if Zen had talked to her about how she'd changed him, how she'd made him better, like they'd talked about down by the butterfly. Or maybe he's come up with his own reason to give her for why her life has meaning.

Either way, she seems happy as she comes back downstairs with them all, hand in hand with Zen.

It's a pretty good ending, all things considered.

-//-

_Day 9_

_Morning_

-//-

"So is this it?" Marie asks. "All the stuff here is taken care of, we're all going home soon?"

Lavenza is with both Marie and Margaret in the Velvet Room, waiting for the first of the Persona-users to start waking up. Yesterday, after defeating Chronos and getting Zen to Rei to say... whatever private words had passed between them, the whole group had come downstairs, triumphant but exhausted. They have a short conversation to confirm that the school and the labyrinths aren't going to vanish for at least another day or so, that they still have time before they'll have to go home, before Zen and Rei will have to move on to wherever they're going next.

(Zen, although he does not need to, although he is not the same kind of being as Rei, has decided to move on with her)

(Lavenza has been thinking about this)

And then the entire group goes straight to bed.

There's normally at least one or two people wandering around in the middle of the night, but today they're beat up and exhausted and every single one of them goes back to the gym and passes out without any further discussion.

"We will have to leave before the end of today," Margaret says to Marie, in answer to her question. "I don't think that this haven in the rift will last for too much longer."

"No," Lavenza agrees. "It won't."

And there are things she needs to do before then, which is why she excuses herself from the conversation and goes looking for her Trickster.

Well, 'looking.' It's never difficult for her to find him, and when the older Akira gets up surprisingly early and goes to find a quiet place, Lavenza joins him there.

He's sitting with his sleeves rolled up and a marker in hand, writing in small neat lines down his wrist.

"Good morning," Lavenza says quietly, easing into a seat across from him. "I see you're putting your plan into action?"

"Well," he says, eyeing his work critically. "I have no idea if it'll work or not, but I have to at least try." He looks up, meeting her eyes, and she realizes that he's not wearing his glasses. "Maybe I get back to 2016 and all of it's gone and I don't remember anything, but..." He shrugs. "I don't know. I have to try. All of this is just too important to not even _try_ and remember."

"I agree," Lavenza says. "And normally I... I don't know if I would have. But in these circumstances? I have to."

"Because of Igor," Akira says.

"Or whoever he is," Lavenza says. She leans forward. "Trickster, you need to understand... I _want_ you to understand that whoever you have been dealing with in the Velvet Room is not the person you should have met. My master is not always easy to understand, especially for guests, but he would not have treated you as a prisoner. He would have cared for your growth, the same way that I would have."

Akira nods slowly. "I did meet the real Igor once," he says, which is news to Lavenza. "Yu took me to the Velvet Room in 2011, and that was when I met him and Margaret for the first time. Yu was hoping I'd be able to fuse Persona, but--"

"But you weren't a guest yet," Lavenza finishes, because she knows the rules.

"Right," Akira says. "And we did get around that eventually, because Yu would get Persona that I needed and I'd recruit them, but--the point is that when I went into the Velvet Room, I don't think Igor said a single word--"

It might have saved Akira a lot of grief down the line if her master _had_ spoken, Lavenza thinks. 

"But I sort of had the idea that he liked me," Akira says. "I think he let me steal from him."

"Why did you _try_?" Lavenza asks, exasperated.

"I couldn't help myself," Akira says, not even trying not to smile. "But..." the smile fades. "I guess I should have seen the difference this year. I just thought that--I don't know. That I'd messed up. And it was my fault that he was different, and that the Velvet Room was different."

"It wasn't," Lavenza tells him. "I promise you that it wasn't."

Akira watches her for a long moment, and then leans down and pulls something out--his dagger. "Don't tell Yu I'm doing this," he says. "He'll tell me I'm being stupid."

"And I assume he'll be right," Lavenza says. "What _are_ you doing?"

"If I forget most of what happens here, I'll be fine," he says. "There are things I want to remember, but I don't need them. So I still hope the marker works, but if it doesn't, I..." He looks distinctly uncomfortable. "I need to find a way to tell myself about Igor."

"You're going to--" She stares at the knife, then at him. "This _is_ stupid," she says.

"Stupider than walking into whatever trap Fake Igor has for me with my eyes closed?" Akira asks.

Lavenza closes her own eyes for a second, then shakes her head. "No," she admits.

So she watches as Akira runs the tip of his dagger over the back of one arm, on the opposite side from where he's been working with marker. Not deeply enough to permanently scar himself, she doesn't think, not even enough to start bleeding as long as he's careful not to move too much for a while. But it's enough to leave raised white lines that will last for a few days. He doesn't so much as blink as he does it, but at the end he pulls a face and waves his arm like he's trying to shake off the pain. Just for a couple seconds, then he smiles at her and says, "Not so bad."

"I've seen you lie much more convincingly than that, Trickster," Lavenza tells him.

"I don't really want to lie to you," he answers.

Lavenza doesn't really know what to say to that, so instead she stays silent, and after a few moments Akira goes back to his writing.

"I'm going to go," she says as she stands. "If you don't mind being alone for a while."

"Hang on a second," Akira says, standing up too. "I'm not sure if--we're going to have another chance to talk alone before everyone goes back, so I wanted to say goodbye to you. Just in case."

"I'm sure we'll see each other again," Lavenza tells him.

"I'm sure _you_ will," Akira says. "You're going back to Inaba with the other me, I know for a fact you'll see plenty of each other."

"I'm sure that you will too," Lavenza says. "If anyone could figure out what happened to me, in your time, I think it would be you."

"I hope so," Akira says. "I'm going to try."

"I'll wait for you," Lavenza tells him, and he sort of smiles as he steps forward and hugs her. Lavenza, after a moment of surprise (he's so _tall_ ), returns the gesture. 

Upside down on his arm, she can see her name in fresh ink, drying on his wrist. She wonders what he's written about her, but tears her eyes away instead of reading it. "Goodbye," she tells him.

"I'll see you later," he tells her.

Lavenza nods with a little jerk of her head.

And then she goes to wake the younger Trickster, because if he's willing to cut himself open to try and remember what's most important, she thinks that she can take a risk, too.

-//-

_Day 9_

_Morning_

-//-

Akira wakes to Lavenza's hand on his shoulder. He opens his eyes wide and starts to say something, but she puts a finger on her lips and shakes her head.

"Is something wrong?" he whispers.

"No," she says. "But I need to talk to you, and I don't want to wake everyone up."

"You woke me up," he says.

She does this _thing_ she sometimes does, where she doesn't roll her eyes, but manages to imply somehow that if she were the type of person to roll her eyes, she would be doing that now.

"Okay, okay," Akira says. "I'm getting up..."

It's not as early as he thinks it is, when he get out to the hall with her and thinks to check the time on his phone.

"I don't think Yu _ever_ sleeps in past nine," he says, scrubbing a hand through his horrible bedhead.

"Well you did all have a pretty draining fight yesterday," Lavenza says. "And you've been fighting Shadows more or less nonstop for more than a week."

"Yeah," Akira says, and yawns. "When you put it like that, I kind of want to go back to bed too."

"No," she informs him, with a small smile. "We need to do something important."

And she refuses to explain anything else until they're up on the roof, sitting together on one of the benches, facing each other.

"So," Lavenza says at last, twisting her hands together in a show of nervousness that Akira has not _ever_ seen in her before. "I know this won't do much to discourage you, but it needs to be said. What I'm thinking of doing is not a good idea. It is most likely dangerous for me, and possibly for you as well."

Akira is immediately curious.

"I told you yesterday that something is going to happen to me in the next five years," she says. "And I told you that I was afraid."

He nods. 

"I don't know what's going to happen," Lavenza says. "Whether I'm going to die, or be trapped somewhere, or pulled into a hundred pieces."

"Is that possible?" Akira asks, surprised and horrified. "That last one?"

"Yes," she says. "It would not be pleasant for me, but considering that possibility is actually what gave me this idea." She reaches her nervous, twisting hands to her chest, and does something that Akira can't quite see. But her expression twists in a grimace of pain, and when she pulls her hands away there is something in her cupped palms.

Akira leans forward and sees a tiny, half translucent butterfly resting there, like a smaller copy of the one he and Zen had helped in the labyrinth yesterday. "What is this?" he asks.

"A little part of me," Lavenza says. She shifts her hands so that the butterfly rests in only one palm--with the other hand she takes Akira's, and pulls it toward her so that the butterfly rests between their two hands. "I want to give it to you for safekeeping."

"For..." He swallows. "What does that mean, exactly?"

"Whatever horrible thing happens to me," Lavenza says. "A part of me is going to stay safe with you. And we're all going to forget what happens here, so you won't know it, and I won't know it, but that piece of me will be with you. And it will be safe, after... everything."

There's quiet between them. Akira has the feeling that this is very, very important.

"And this will help you?" he asks.

"It might," Lavenza says. "It depends on what exactly will happen to me in the future. It depends on... on a lot of things that nobody here knows."

"You said that it might be dangerous," Akira says.

"I'm giving away a part of myself," Lavenza says. "That's always dangerous. And you'll be holding something that might attract attention from people that know about that kind of thing. You might end up in a situation you aren't equipped to handle."

"When am I not?" Akira asks. "I've been in over my head since the day my parents died." With sudden determination, he presses his hand closer to hers, feeling a breath of wings between them for just a second, and then a jolt in his palm like blue electricity. He hasn't felt anything at all like it before. "I hope it helps you," he tells her.

"So do I," Lavenza says quietly. She gives him a crooked smile that still seems to be hiding a little bit of pain behind it. "I never would have thought of that before this year," she says. 

"Maybe you're starting to be a little bit of a Trickster too," Akira says. He pulls his hand away from hers, and studies it like he expects to see something different about it. And maybe he does, for a second? He thinks he spots a flicker of a pattern like open wings printed on his palm, but it's gone when he blinks. It could have just been his imagination--he definitely doesn't feel any different, except for a strange kind of pride that she's trusting him with this.

"Did you tell older me about this?" he asks.

"I did not," she says. "You can if you want to, but since we're all going to forget, I thought it might just complicate things if more people know."

"And you didn't want to just give it to him?" Akira asks.

"We're from the same time," she says. "Me and you. It felt less risky this way, so that I know I'm not scattering pieces of myself across time."

"And maybe you like me better?" he asks, grinning.

She scoffs. "You're the same person, Trickster."

"He's old."

This makes her laugh. "I'm glad to see that you've gotten comfortable enough with this to make fun of yourself," she says. 

"Well..." He shrugs, and feels a little self conscious as he says, "We kind of... talked a little after the fight yesterday. And before that we talked about our parents, and... and things like that. It's kind of cool to know that I'm going to grow up into that kind of person."

"So because you think he's cool, you... make fun of yourself."

"Yeah, exactly." Akira flexes his hand, not really thinking about the motion much, then stands up. "I'm going to go see if I can wake Yu up," he announces. "I think it'll give him a heart attack that I'm up before him."

"You're so strange," she says with a sigh.

"We wouldn't be friends if I wasn't strange," he points out. "If I was normal, I would have turned around and run away the first time you tried to get me to leave the TV World."

She's smiling and shaking her head as he turns and goes back downstairs.

...and he's _planning_ to go downstairs and wake up Yu, he really is. But he hasn't quite gotten there when he stumbles on the classroom where his older self is sitting and writing something on his arm.

Akira had figured out the plan that day when they talked about his new scar in the nurse's office. Obviously, if a scar can survive this place, it makes sense that other things might be able to come through the same way. "Are you writing the things you want to remember after we all go home?" he asks.

"Yep," his older self says. 

"Can I write something?" Akira asks, venturing a few steps inside.

"No," says the older Akira. "Because I didn't do it, so if you did, that would be a time paradox."

"I know," Akira says. He does _kind of_ understand how the time travel thing works, and Futaba had given him a lecture one morning that had taught him some more but also really, really confused him. "I meant, can I write on you?"

"Oh." 

For a second, he thinks the answer is going to be no, but then the older Akira shrugs and says, "Why not?"

Akira takes the marker that's offered to him, and moves so that he can write along the scar on the back of his older self's arm, the one that had given him the idea for this whole writing plan in the first place.

"Don't put it there," older Akira says, swatting him away. "I won't be able to see it."

"So find a mirror when you get home," Akira says, ducking the swat and laughing. "Anyway, that just means it'll be a surprise. And you can't write on the back of your own elbow anyway, so I'm not taking up space you could have used for actual important stuff."

There's no immediate answer, but his older self lets Akira hold his arm still, so that he can write a line over the scar.

 _Lavenza gave me a piece of herself to keep safe,_ he writes in his absolute best handwriting. _Take care of it._

(He thinks, for a second, that he feels that same electric fluttering feeling against his fingers as he writes)

(But it has to be just his imagination)

"Done?" his older self asks.

"Yep," Akira says. He hands the marker back and heads for the door. "See you later?"

"See you."

He waves and runs back out, the impulse decision to leave that message already out of his mind.

...well, Lavenza _had_ said that he could tell his older self if he wants to. He's just doing it in a way that means there's a chance that it'll actually stick with him when all this is over.

-//-

_Day 9_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Makoto does not have any problem with the group decision to spend the day just... hanging out in the fake Yasogami before the whole place vanishes. Soon Zen and Rei will move on to... wherever they need to go. And with them gone, apparently, the school won't head together for long, and they'll all need to go home.

And forget all of this.

That's the other reason that Makoto is not unhappy about spending an extra day here. So much has happened in just nine days. She'd traveled into a demi-plane, met people from another time, awakened a Persona, and made what she considers friends.

And all of that will be gone as soon as they go home again. 

Makoto and Haru are sitting together, in tight consultation about what things might look like when they're back in Tokyo, when Margaret comes looking for them.

"I was hoping I might find you together," she says. "There is something I wanted to discuss with the two of you."

"Us?" Haru asks.

"Yes," Margaret says. "You have both awakened your Persona, in a place that will not allow you to remember it."

Makoto nods. "We were just talking about that, actually," she says. 

"What... happens with that?" Haru asks tentatively. "Are we really just going to forget that this ever happened?"

"Yes," Margaret says.

Makoto exchanges a look with Haru.

"But awakening a Persona brings change inside of you," Margaret says. "Neither of you is exactly the same person that you were when you first came to this place. And while I've never seen a situation exactly like this one..." She pauses, and allows a small smile. "While I can't _remember_ ever seeing a situation like this one before," she amends. "I don't believe that it would be this easy to lose your Persona, or the changes that they bring in you."

A moment of relief passes through Makoto. Then she starts thinking of follow-up questions. "Does that mean there's a chance we're not going to forget what happened here?" she asks.

"No," Margaret says. "I don't think that you're going to remember any of the specifics of what happened here. But if you are ever in a situation where you are brought back to the metaverse, I think it's very likely that your Persona will come back to you quickly. You are ready for your Persona. You have made the choice to accept them, and you aren't going to lose that easily."

"We just won't know what we have," Haru says. "Not unless we somehow come back to the metaverse."

"And that's..." Makoto hesitates. "Unlikely."

"Not as unlikely as you might think," Margaret says. "Just the fact that the two of you are so close to a Trickster means that you're more likely than most people to be dragged back into circumstances like this one."

"So maybe we'll get our Persona back," Haru says. "Maye it will even happen soon. Or... maybe we _never_ will."

"I'm sorry," Margaret says. "I really do wish that I had better news for the two of you, but..."

"No," Makoto says quickly. "I understand. You're giving us what you can, and..."

"Thank you," Haru adds. "We were just saying that we would probably lose all of this completely, so just knowing that there's a chance is... it's good to hear."

And at least, Makoto thinks, they'll never _know_ that they're missing anything important.

(Somehow this feels like it should help, but it doesn't)

"I also came with this," Margaret says, and holds up--of all things--a marker.

"What's this for?" Makoto says.

"Is this the one Akira borrowed off Yusuke earlier?" Haru adds. "I heard them talking about it, but I didn't hear why it was important."

Margaret looks faintly embarrassed. "Well," she says. "It has been suggested that since you will all be physically going back to your own times, that possibly writing the things you want to remember will help them to stay with you."

She explains, briefly, and with the caveat that it might not even work.

But at the end of the explanation, Makoto writes _Johanna_ on her palm, and Haru writes _Milady_ on hers, and there is a little bit more hope between them than there had been before. Makoto closes her hand over the word, feeling her Persona stirring in the back of her mind, and wonders what kind of person she's going to be when she wakes up tomorrow. Is she going to go straight back to the suspicions of Akira she'd had before this all started? Straight back to chasing the Phantom Thieves?

It doesn't feel right anymore. She's fought beside them. She's seen them all risk their lives.

There's nothing she can do now to stop herself from going home and thinking all the same things that she had before. Nothing but the vague hope that for her and Haru, having their Persona with them now might make enough of a difference to matter.

"Are you nervous?" Haru asks, when Margaret has said her goodbyes, and gone.

"Yes," Makoto says honestly. "I'm very nervous that I'm going to make a mistake and... do things the way I would have done them before we came here."

"I think we can figure out how to do the right thing," Haru says. She's studying her hand as if she's trying to memorize the shape of the name she's written across her palm. "We won't remember any of what happened here, but a Persona is not exactly a memory. The things that we decided, when they came to us... those things aren't going away, like Margaret said. The things that we chose, and the things that we've decided we need to change about ourselves?" She smiles. "I don't think we're going to lose them. I think that we _are_ going to be different when we go home."

Makoto stares for a second too long, then realizes she's being rude, and smiles. "I'm glad we ended up friends, Haru," she says.

Haru laughs. "The two of us and Akira," she says. "The Gardening Club slash Phantom Thief Finders."

Makoto laughs too. "Well," she says. "We _did_ find them."

And--for completely different reasons than she would have had a week ago--she hopes that they'll find them again when they get home.

She hopes that, somehow, they get a chance to join them.

-//-

_Day 9_

_Evening_

-//-

They gather in the Velvet Room to say goodbye.

"This is weird," Yu admits to the older Akira, as the two of them stand in front of the doors in the Velvet Room that lead back to their respective times. "I want to say goodbye, but--"

"But you're sort of going home with me," Akira finishes, with a nod to his younger self. "And we're not going to remember any of this anyway."

"So maybe there's not actually a point in saying goodbye," Yu agrees.

"Not for me," Akira says. "I texted you in 2016 like... _right_ before we got here that there was an emergency, so I guess the first thing I'm going to have to do when I get back is figure out how I'm going to explain that without remembering anything." He glances down at his arms, where Yu knows he's taken careful, _copious_ notes about their time here. "Hopefully I'll have something to say."

"Good luck," Yu says. "And--you know. Good luck with everything else."

"You too," Akira says. "I know you'll get through everything, but I also know it'll be hard."

Yu puts his hand out, because it feels like this moment deserves... _something_ , to formalize the fact that they'd found their way here from across time, that they'd fought together, and that they're going their separate ways.

Akira rolls his eyes and pulls him in for a hug instead.

The rest of the goodbyes take a little while longer, just because there are so many of them. And some of them will see each other again, it sounds like. Akira for sure sounds like he's going to be in Yu's life for a good, long time. But it won't ever be like this again, with all of them together and the same age.

And none of them will ever see Zen or Rei again, either. 

Rei goes around hugging everyone as she says goodbye, looking less weighed down and more at peace than she has this entire time, while Zen stands--as always--on the edge of the group.

"What did he say to you?" Yu asks her, when Rei comes to give him her enthusiastic hug. "I... maybe it's not something I should ask. But..." 

But she'd been on the verge of breaking to pieces because of her returned memories, before she'd been taken to the top of the clocktower. And then they'd gone to get her, and Zen had said something that none of the rest of them had heard, and now?

"I didn't want to die, Yu," Rei tells him, looking up through wide eyes. "Because I lived my whole life in hospitals--all I wanted was to be normal. To go to school, and have friends, and be healthy. I--I never got to do anything in my life that made it worth the fact that I was born at all."

"Rei..."

"But then Zen told me that I did things after I died that maybe no one else could do," she says. "He said that... he used to just be Chronos. Just someone that did his job and nothing else mattered." Her eyes are almost sparkling, Yu thinks. "And I didn't get a chance to do much when I was alive, but... look at everything I got to do after." She grins. "Maybe the whole reason I lived was so that I could die, and do... all this after. And meet all of you, and... and maybe change some of you, a little. So that after you all go back, some of what happened will still--it'll be there, with all of you."

(There must be a little bit of rebel in her, too, Yu thinks, if she can be okay with that realization)

"Zen said all that to you?" Yu asks, because honestly? He's never seen Zen say that much at one time, ever.

"We've been talking all day," she tells him. "It took a little while to get the whole thing out of him." And she doesn't elaborate any further than that. Yu doesn't ask. It feels like maybe the words that had passed between them should stay there. Just between the two of them.

Zen and Rei are the first to leave. 

They walk out of the Velvet Room, and they keep walking, hand in hand, Rei's eyes fixed on Zen's face the whole time. And then there's a golden light that catches the two of them, and--they're gone.

Which means it's time for the rest of them to go, too. 

Yu turns his attention to the door that's going to take him home. He's absolutely walking through it first, because if for any reason they're wrong about any of this, and something terrible happens, at least the rest of them will have a little bit of warning. 

"Hey," says teenage Akira next to him, from where he's studying his own door. "Want to switch and see what happens?"

"No," Yu says.

Akira laughs. "Can you even imagine?" he says. "It'd be such a mess." And then he takes a breath--deep but quiet, so that Yu is the only one that hears it--and goes through the other door.

There's no real point in any of them staying here anymore, is there? Everything that they can do, has been done. Everything that needs to be said has been said. Yu heads through the door. Back to the real world, where none of them will remember any of what's just happened.

For a second he's nowhere, and there's a confusing, disorienting feeling of losing memories, of not knowing exactly what's happening or where he's been or where he's going, and then the world slips back into place around him.

He feels suddenly exhausted, a kind of bone deep tiredness that he can't remember ever feeling before. It's a little like the way it feels to come out of the TV World after fighting for a few hours, but--much worse. Like he's been in the TV World for days, for a _week_ maybe, and that doesn't make any sense at all because, as it happens, he hasn't been in there for a while. They've all been so busy setting up for the culture festival that there just hasn't been much time. He's just been here, in the real world, for days now. Nothing exciting at all going on.

Maybe he's just coming down with something?

Well, at least there's not much they actually need to do with their class's display. No one in their right mind would show up to a Group Date Cafe, which means that the next couple hours are pretty much just Yu and his friends sitting around and talking. _Everyone's_ a little tired, and it's nice to just sit around and talk until the end of the festival.

At some point, a nervous looking Akira pokes his head into the classroom and asks if it's okay if he just heads home.

"I can walk home with you if you can wait about another half hour," Yu says. "I just need to help clean up here."

"Nah," Yosuke says. "We can take care of this. You can go home now if you want."

"You're sure?" Yu asks.

"You look exhausted," Yosuke says. "Go ahead."

They all look tired, but Yu gives in when the rest of the group more or less pushes him out, and leaves Yasogami with Akira.

"So what were you doing all day?" he asks. "I thought you'd come back at some point."

Akira shrugs, then yawns hugely. "I just kind of walked around. I don't know, I felt really tired after a while. And I didn't really feel like hanging out."

"You okay?" Yu asks.

Akira sort of shrugs with one shoulder. "Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Hey, Yu?" He doesn't wait, but instead goes right into his question. "Do you ever... do you ever get a feeling like you're forgetting something really important?"

Yu hesitates. He _does_ , actually, feel in a weird way like he's forgetting something right now. But even as he starts to investigate the feeling, it fades away. And he decides that whatever it is that he's forgotten can't have been all that important anyway. "I guess," he says. "Why?"

"I..." Akira sighs. "I don't know."

They walk home. And that night both of them go to bed early, worn out and tired from... what honestly hadn't been all that busy of a day.

(And then five days later, Akira and Nanako are pulled into the TV World, and Yu learns that the boy he's been sharing a room with all year is the Trickster he's heard so much about)

(And then a month and a half after _that_ , he leaves Inaba in Akira's safekeeping while the rest of them chase Adachi into the TV World)

(And then a _year_ after that, when Akira has more or less permanently settled into Inaba, and Yu is back in town on a visit, they take a trip up to the cemetery where Akira's parents' graves are, and in an out of the way corner they find an overgrown grave with the name Niko on it)

(Neither of them really knows why they spend the afternoon cleaning it up, but it just feels... _better_ , afterwards)

-//-

_May 30, 2016_

_Lunchtime_

-//-

Akira comes back to Shujin with a disoriented jolt--

(And then thinks _back?_ he hasn't gone anywhere)

\--and stands still for a second, letting a dep exhaustion settle into his bones. He hasn't felt like this since... when _had_ he last felt like this? Back when he was a kid, maybe, during the P-1 Tournament? Or the Christmas before that, fighting Shadows in real world Inaba while the fog from the TV World--

The fog. He looks around, holding his glasses in one hand, but the sky is clear and the feeling of Inaba has completely gone.

His phone buzzes, and he pulls it out to see a message from Yu.

> **Yu**
> 
> What's going on, Akira?

What _is_ going on? There had been fog, and then the fog had been gone, fading away without leaving so much as a single Shadow or world-ending threat behind.

> **Yu**
> 
> Akira?

He has to say something.

> **Yu**
> 
> The fog's gone
> 
> Just like that?
> 
> I guess? I have no idea what just happened
> 
> Well me and Rise are here
> 
> And we ran into Yusuke and Futaba, we're all outside
> 
> ...
> 
> I'm going to come down and just cut class for the afternoon
> 
> I think we need to figure this out

"Akira?"

He looks up, wincing, and remembers that he's not alone up here on the roof. Haru and Makoto are both looking at him like he's gone crazy, which to be fair is a pretty reasonable interpretation for someone that completely freaks out about fog.

"Sorry," Akira says. "It's just... I'm not feeling well."

Makoto, he notices, is staring at her hand like she's expecting to see something there. He looks down at his own and for just a second he thinks that there should be something there. His mind paints lines of words across his palm and down his wrist, but he blinks and they're gone, and he is left with nothing but bone deep exhaustion and a vague sense of frustration.

"I need to go," he says. "If that's--" He shrugs. "I'll see you at lunch tomorrow?"

He half expects an argument, and wouldn't have blamed them after how weird he's been acting. But the two of them just chorus a goodbye, and Akira makes a hasty exit from the roof.

-//-

(Makoto watches him go and feels--)

(Different. She doesn't know how yet, but she feels different)

(She looks down again at the clear space on her palm, stares for several seconds, and then closes her fingers around the sudden, deep sense of loss)

(There's something missing, and _she is going to get it back_ )

-//-

Akira doesn't have a particularly hard time getting out of school without being seen, and he finds Yu, Rise, Yusuke, and Futaba all outside. Yusuke and Futaba look about as tired as Akira feels, and Yu's expression is concerned.

"What happened?" he asks, looking directly at Akira.

 _Something_. The more Akira thinks about it, the more convinced he is that _something_ must have happened. He's beyond tired, and feels the same way that Futaba and Yusuke look. Tired like been-to-the-metaverse tired. And there had been the fog, too, there's no _way_ that hadn't been important, and then it had just been gone, and...

"You're bleeding," Rise says abruptly, and Akira looks down where she's pointing, at his arm. There's some soreness there that he hasn't really been paying attention to (there are so many _other_ things to be worried about right now), but there's something sticky and tight against his sleeve. It pulls at the fabric when he tries to take it off, and what Akira finds underneath is fresh blood, and under the blood--a message cut into his arm by the point of a knife. Akira recognizes the writing, even as messy as it is, written with a knife against skin.

 _Igor,_ it says, in his own handwriting. _Fake._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo! Writing boss fights is always hard. But this one's done and I don't even care if it was good or not, I'm just happy that I don't have to spend any more of my life editing it :p
> 
> And so we get to the end of an experiment that I hope has been as much fun to read as it has been to write. It's so strange to come out of this without any of the characters remembering anything, and I think it's pretty obvious that I waffled over that decision for a while xD
> 
> Oh well. Akira's coming out of it with a big neon sign that Igor is trouble, Lavenza gave him a little something to keep safe for her, and I honestly don't think Makoto and Haru would lose their Persona as easily as their memories. So that feels like a compromise that I, personally, am happy with :)


	26. May 30 - June 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you skipped the PQ chapters because you don't want spoilers, there is a PQ-spoiler-free summary in the top comment on this chapter. It covers the important stuff that happened in regards to this fic, and doesn't mention anything PQ related.
> 
> And now, have a second chapter this weekend, courtesy of the fact that my dungeons and dragons group is one session away from fighting the big bad of our campaign and I am freaking the heck out??? So here have a new chapter while I try to distract myself from panicking about how we're all about to die.

_May 30_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Yu has no idea what had happened at Shujin earlier with the fog, but it is patently obvious that _something_ had. The three Phantom Thieves standing with himself and Rise are absolutely beat in a way that Yu associates with the absolute toughest of fights in the metaverse. He'd felt like that after beating Adachi, or Izanami, or even after the P-1 Tournament. And he thinks that Akira recognizes the same thing, because he's quiet and visibly thoughtful, and doesn't even think to object to the fact that they're all out in public together until they're on a train.

"I'm not supposed to be with you," he says to Yu, after they've been sitting on the train for almost five minutes. "Probation."

Yu's honestly more worried about the fact that Akira is out in a school uniform in the middle of the day. So far no one's bothered them, but he'd seen at least one truant officer eyeing the group at the station before they left. In a way, it's lucky that Yusuke had been cutting class before this anyway, because at least he's in casual clothes.

"Don't worry so much," Futaba says, giving Akira a half-hearted kick from where she's curled up on her seat. Then she yawns. "We can go back to Leblanc, Sojiro won't tell."

Akira raises his eyebrows at her.

"He didn't tell about Nanko and her dad showing up," Futaba says. "And he was cool about Yusuke crashing there."

"He probably doesn't even know you're not supposed to see Yu," Yusuke adds.

"He _definitely_ knows I'm not supposed to be out of school in the middle of the day," Akira says.

"Then we'll just hang around somewhere for a little while," Futaba says. "It'll be fine."

Akira hesitates, and then shrugs, which tells Yu exactly how tired he must be. Ever since getting to Tokyo, for _months_ now, the thing on the forefront of his mind has been keeping on top of his probation and its terms, and not being _caught_ making trouble. It's why he'd refused to talk to Yu for weeks, why they usually only meet in Mementos even now.

(Briefly, Yu considers suggesting Mementos now, but if the Thieves' exhaustion has anything to do with the metaverse like he suspects it does, then going back in isn't going to make them feel any better)

And that's how they end up, at 2:00 on a Monday afternoon, hanging out at the otherwise deserted batting cages in Yongen-Jaya. They're off the street and out of sight, and the bored, middle aged man that works at the desk doesn't seem to care that most of them should be at school.

Yu pays the entry fee for all five of them, and they sit in one of the batting cages to talk. No one else is here this time of day, with most people at work or school, so it's as safe as it probably can be, for the moment. 

"So no one else knows what happened at school either," Akira says, as he scrolls through some texts on his phone. "Ann says Ryuji was with her and Morgana in our classroom the whole time the fog was coming in, and they didn't see anything at all."

"Did you leave Morgana there?" Yusuke asks.

"I... honestly didn't think about that when I left," Akira admits, his thumb freezing in its laconic scrolling. "He doesn't eat lunch with me and Haru and Makoto so..." He sighs. "I don't know. I'll see if he wants to go back with one of them for the night, otherwise I'll go back and pick him up after school gets out."

"How are they feeling?" Rise asks. "Your other friends, I mean?"

"Well Ryuji's not saying anything at all," Futaba says. She's looking down at her own phone, presumably reading through the same group chat that Akira is. "And he'll usually respond right away even if we're not talking to him, so he's _probably_ sleeping through class."

Akira checks the time. "I think his class has English now," he says. "And Ryuji usually sleeps through that anyway, so..."

"Ann says she's feeling pretty tired too," Yusuke reports.

Yu sighs. "Okay," he says. "So--the fog came in, _something_ happened, and all of you look like you've been fighting Shadows for about a week."

"And there's Akira's arm," Futaba adds.

Right. Akira's arm.

He's taken his school jacket off by now, and reluctantly holds his arm out so they can all see the series of scratches against his forearm. A few of the characters have split open, and blood has oozed and dried and crusted over the message there.

Igor. Fake.

Yu has never tried to explain Igor or the Velvet Room to anyone other than Akira before. He doesn't know if Akira has said anything to anyone, but judging by the reactions from Yusuke and Futaba as they crowd in close to read the message, Yu's guessing _no_. He knows of course that Yusuke has met Lavenza, and he's pretty sure that Futaba's heard about her, but the subject of Igor apparently hasn't come up.

"Did you write this?" Yusuke asks Akira.

"I don't think so," Akira says. "But... it does look like my writing." He pulls his arm back and picks at the crust of dried blood there. "I don't know. It doesn't make a lot of sense."

"Who's Igor?" Rise asks.

"It's... kind of a whole thing," Akira says. "He's--" His eyes flick sideways, and he looks over at Yu for help.

"He's someone me and Akira both know," Yu says. "And sort of a long story."

"I just wish we knew what _happened_ ," Akira says, dropping his head into his hands and rubbing at his temples. This turns the conversation away from Igor, at least for now. If Yusuke is still worried or Futaba has more questions, Yu will leave that for Akira to deal with later. Rise, at least, doesn't seem particularly inclined to ask about Igor again.

(It... doesn't feel right, somehow, to explain him to other people)

They speculate for a while about what happened at Shujin, but without any information at all to go on, they come up short. Besides, the three Phantom Thieves are too tired and out of it to really contribute much to the discussion beyond the basics. After only about an hour, Yusuke and Futaba head out, and Rise follows a little while later.

Yu stays back to talk to Akira, because now that they have the privacy to talk, they're going to have a conversation about Igor.

They _need_ to, because whatever Fake Igor means, it's not good.

"So," he says.

Akira groans. "Igor," he finishes. "Yeah, we need to talk about that." He's still for a second, then says, "I don't know if there's any way we could ever figure out if the Igor in the Velvet Room actually is a fake. We'd need someone that knew him before this year, _and_ can get in to see him this year."

"You met him in Inaba," Yu says.

"Yeah," Akira says. "Once, and he didn't even say anything then."

"He talks now, though?" Yu asks.

"Sure," Akira says.

"Well... what doe he talk about?"

So they sit there and talk about Igor for over an hour. It's easily the most time they've ever spent talking about the Velvet Room together. Even between the two of them, it's just--not something that they talk about. Margaret, Lavenza, Marie--sure. The Velvet Room itself, yeah. Talking about their various collections of Persona, and fusions, absolutely. But Igor is just so--strange, so hard to get a read on, that Yu has never really wanted to spend much time talking him.

And Akira, he quickly realizes, has a completely different reason for wanting to stay away from that subject.

Yu's experience with Igor is that the man had always been watching him, maybe even judging, but in a way that feels like he'd been waiting for him to step up to the plate and do what he needed to. And maybe Igor had never been as chatty as Margaret--it's a stretch to describe Margaret as _chatty_ , anyway--but when he did have something to say, it always felt like something that deserved to be listened to and taken seriously.

That's obviously not what Akira's getting from him at all. The Igor he's been dealing with has offered him no guidance whatsoever. He talks vaguely about rehabilitating Akira, or about a game that he hasn't bothered to explain. He shows no emotion or regret whatsoever when Akira asks about Lavenza. He watches everything that happens in the Velvet Room with a look that Akira describes as _calculating_.

He doesn't sound at all like the Igor that Yu remembers, is the point, and when Akira eventually gets around to describing his voice, that's the definite last straw. Whoever is running the Velvet Room this year, it is not Igor.

"It explains some stuff," Akira says. "He won't let you in because you'd figure it out. And he might have even--he could have gotten rid of Lavenza himself, because she'd _definitely_ know..." 

Akira trails off and Yu looks over at him. He's not sure exactly what he's expecting to see, but the expression of hardened _anger_ on Akira's face surprises him. 

"This isn't right," he says. "And I'm going to do something about it."

"Akira," Yu says, with a sudden jolt of panic. Fake Igor, whoever he is, is dangerous. And Akira, with that look on his face, clearly intends to live up to the title of Trickster in any way he possibly can. "You can't--"

"If he wants to play a game," Akira says, ignoring Yu completely. "Then... then fuck it, _let's play a game._ "

Oh no, Yu thinks, because he's very rarely seen Akira when he decides to go all out in terms of making trouble.

"But if he thinks I'm going to play by the rules," Akira says. "He's going to be surprised."

He stands up, tense and drawn and clearly unhappy. "I want to get in contact with Elizabeth," he says. "I was planning on it already, but I think that's really important right now. She's the only Velvet Room attendant we _might_ be able to talk to, if we can lure her out by gathering enough Persona-users together."

"I think you're right," Yu says. "I can start talking to people from Inaba, maybe even see if Naoto can get some of the Shadow Operatives in on things."

"You don't have to," Akira says. "I can--"

"You have enough to worry about," Yu interrupts. "Let me start talking to people about this."

Akira almost looks like he wants to argue, then gives in. "Okay," he says. "Thanks, Yu."

"Happy to help," Yu says, with complete honesty.

-//-

_June 1_

_Before School_

-//-

Akira meets up with Ann and a miffed Morgana before school, bringing an apology can of the good cat food with him as peace offering.

(Akira's not sure what makes it good, exactly? But it's the one Morgana will eat without complaining, anyway, and sometimes even seems to enjoy)

"I'm really sorry I left without you yesterday," he tells the still unhappy Morgana, when the three of them have met up. "Some stuff kind of happened. I wasn't really thinking when I ditched classes in the afternoon."

" _Obviously_ ," Morgana says. 

"I'm really sorry."

Morgana grumbles a little bit more, but does jump into Akira's bag when Akira offers it, so Akira figures he's probably forgiven. 

"He was fine," Ann whispers, while Morgana's getting himself settled. "He slept in my desk all afternoon and then passed out when we got home. I think he's just being dramatic."

Akira nods and mouths, ' _I figured_ ,' back at her.

"So what exactly happened yesterday?" Ann asks. "I know you were trying to explain it in the group chat last night, but..."

"Yeah," Akira says. "I'm not really sure what happened myself?" But he repeats what little he knows, about the fog and about the possible connection to Inaba. He does not mention the message about Igor, because that feels like a problem for him and Yu to figure out. At least for now, until he finds the right words to explain the Velvet Room. Yesterday after he got back to Leblanc, he'd washed out the scratches with disinfectant, and wrapped a layer of bandages over them. They're already starting to scab over, making the message basically unreadable, and he thinks they'll be healed in a few days.

"So it has something to do with how the metaverse works back in your hometown?" Morgana asks.

"I think so," Akira says. "So I kind of freaked a little. It just--shouldn't have happened here, and I still don't know why it did."

"I might have been worried too," Ann admits. "That sounds... really weird."

"It _is_ ," Akira says. "But thanks for being understanding about it."

"Well," Ann says, with a little bit of forced cheerfulness in her voice now. "I did hear some good news last night. Apparently Madarame's scheduled a press conference for Sunday afternoon, right after his exhibit closes."

"I think he's going to confess," Morgana says, with obvious relish, from inside Akira's bag. 

"I hope so," Akira says, brightening a little himself. "I mean, that has to be it, right?" This Sunday had also been the day he'd originally told Yusuke that he would be reporting him to the police for the stolen painting. But there's no way he'd call the police for that. It just wouldn't make sense--no one would _care_. "We should all meet up and watch it together."

"At Leblanc?" Morgana asks.

"If that's okay with everyone," Akira says. "I know it's kind of out of the way, but there's hardly ever anyone there."

"Perfect," Morgana says, and starts speculating about how Madarame's press conference is going to go with such obvious relish that Akira assumes he's already moved past being abandoned at school yesterday.

So that takes care of the problem of Morgana being upset with him, which only leaves about a hundred other problems to figure out at some point. There's the whole Fake Igor thing. There's still Makoto and Haru and their Phantom Thief finding efforts. There's Akechi, who hasn't been in contact with Akira since their one meeting, but who is _for sure_ keeping as close an eye on Madarame right now as the rest of them are. There's Yusuke, and helping him figure out how his life is going to work now that there's no way he can go back to Madarame. There's the Palace in Inaba that belongs to Nanako's teacher, which Akira is still determined to help out with.

And of course, over everything else, there's still his stupid probation.

He pays no attention whatsoever to his classes once school starts, too caught up in his spinning thoughts to even process what's going on around him. During lunch, he goes up to the roof and spends an unusually quiet hour with Haru and Makoto. The two of them look a little more wrapped up in their own thoughts than usual too, and the few words they do exchange are--for once--all about gardening and not at all about the Phantom Thieves.

The first thing that kind of breaks through the mental fog Akira's caught up in is when Yusuke texts the Phantom Thieves group chat after the end of the school day. Akira's on the train heading home, and he juggles a couple things from one hand to the other before he can find a comfortable way to hold his phone and read the message.

(He's still not completely used to the train system, as much as he sometimes feels like he's starting to get a handle on Tokyo)

(And for some reason, he's felt weirdly homesick ever since the whole fog thing yesterday)

> **Phantom Thieves**
> 
> **Yusuke:** Sensei attempted to contact me during school today
> 
> He did?
> 
> **Ryuji:** Seriously?
> 
> **Yusuke:** Yes. Luckily my advisor heard he was here and since he is... aware that I'm trying to move into the dorms, he asked if I wanted to see him
> 
> **Ann:** Did you want to see him?
> 
> **Yusuke:** Yes
> 
> **Yusuke:** And no
> 
> **Futaba:** :(
> 
> **Yusuke:** She said he seemed upset but not angry
> 
> **Yusuke:** But I didn't want to see him at school, so my advisor went back and told him that he couldn't interrupt the school day
> 
> Are you going to try and see him later?
> 
> **Yusuke:** I think so
> 
> **Yusuke:** Maybe not
> 
> **Yusuke:** I am very confused

He _sounds_ confused, Akira thinks. 

> **Phantom Thieves**
> 
> **Futaba:** Hopefully this is a good sign that the change of heart went through...?
> 
> **Yusuke:** I hope so
> 
> Let us know if you need any help with anything?
> 
> **Yusuke:** I will. Thank you
> 
> **Yusuke:** You all have been more of a family to me lately than Madarame
> 
> You couldn't get rid of us if you tried, Yusuke
> 
> **Ryuji:** No kidding. We're all Phantom Thieves, right?
> 
> **Yusuke:** Right
> 
> **Yusuke:** Thank you all

"He'll be okay," Morgana says, and Akira realizes that the cat has stuck his head out of the bag to read the conversation. "Yusuke looks like he has his head in the clouds, but he's surprisingly solid."

"That doesn't surprise me," Akira says. "Not at all."

"Well," Morgana says. "You've known him for a long time."

"Yeah," Akira agrees. "And--yeah, you're right. He _will_ be fine." 

And if it looks like he won't be? If he's struggling at all? 

He won't just have Akira in his corner, but all of the Phantom Thieves, working together to help him however they can.

-//-

_June 5_

_Afternoon_

-//-

A few months ago--maybe even a few weeks ago--Sojiro would have been flatly unenthusiastic about a crowd of teenagers setting up camp in his cafe. He would have complained about them driving away actual paying customers, and resented them making noise.

But here he is, on a Sunday afternoon, feeling actually relieved that there are half a dozen of them are crowded into one of the booths. At least if Futaba and Akira are here with their friends, he knows what they're up to, and that they aren't doing anything stupid.

(He _still_ has no idea what they do when they disappear in the afternoons after Akira gets out of school)

They're behaving themselves, for the most part, until the loud one--Ryuji--leaps up from the table and makes a beeline for the TV in the corner. "It's about to start!"

"Calm down," Ann says. "We have plenty of time, we're not going to miss it."

"What are you all planning to watch?" Sojiro asks, and watches all the heads turn to look at Akira.

"Yusuke's sensei is going to be on TV," Akira says. "He's... giving some kind of press conference, and we wanted to watch."

"This is that artist," Sojiro says. He says it casually, as if he hadn't looked the guy up as soon as Akira brought Yusuke by, and said that he couldn't go back to his guardian. "Madarame, right?"

"Yeah," Akira says. 

"Is this about those..." Madarame had been in the news, recently, and Sojiro had seen it when he looked the man up online. "Those ghost thieves, or whatever they're called?"

 _"Ghost Thieves?"_ Futaba repeats, in the same offended tone she uses whenever he doesn't understand some piece of pop culture that she thinks is absolutely essential knowledge.

"Well, I don't remember what it was," he tells her. "Something like that."

"Phantom Thieves," Futaba says.

"Shh!" Ryuji says. He doesn't look like he's heard a single word of what's been going on around him. "It's about to start."

The other kids go quiet, and even Sojiro leans over a little against the counter so he can see the screen. He's curious, he'll admit that. He hasn't pushed too much into what the guy had been doing to drive Yusuke away from home. It's bad--he's willing to take the kids' word on that. And a part of him is worried that if he asks too many questions, he'll just be convincing the kids that they aren't safe here, either. 

But he's curious.

The press conference is intense, and even a little uncomfortable. Madarame cries through most of it, and confesses to a whole host of crimes. Plagiarism and theft, and a cruelty toward his students that stretches at least into emotional abuse and possibly past that. He talks about some famous painting of his that he'd apparently pretended was stolen so that he could sell copies to rich investors.

He seems like a real piece of work, Sojiro thinks as the press conference ends. He hadn't completely followed everything that Madarame said--partly because he doesn't exactly follow what's going on in the art world, and partly because the man had been actually crying too much to be coherent, by the end.

When the conference is over, Yusuke buries his face in his hands with a deep sigh. "It's done," he says, voice muffled. "Everyone knows what he did now."

Akira pats him a couple times on the back, and Ann asks, "Do you feel... better, now?"

A few moments pass, and the only sound in the café is the vague hum of commercials from the TV. Then Yusuke lifts his head and looks, honestly, like there's a weight that's been lifted from his shoulders. He looks more like a sixteen year old kid. "Yes," he says firmly. "I do. That was--yes. I feel better."

And it's at this point that they break out into about three conversations at once, most of which goes completely over Sojiro's head. He leaves them to it, until after a while Ann and Ryuji leave to catch the train and head home. Yusuke comes up to Sojiro not long after.

"I wanted to say thank you for letting me stay," he says. "I've been speaking to my advisor at school, and I should be able to move into the dorms after classes tomorrow."

"Yeah, well." Anyone would have let the kid crash for a few nights. Maybe other people would have asked more questions, fine, but Yusuke had obviously been in a tough situation. "I've had worse house guests."

Yusuke gives a very serious nod. "It was a big help to me," he says. "Because if you hadn't let me stay, I think Akira would have just had me climb in through his window instead."

"Like I've never had to climb in through yours," Akira calls from the other side of the room.

Sojiro, unnoticed by either of them, raises his eyebrows.

"Yes," Yusuke says patiently. "But you're on the second floor."

These kids, Sojiro decides, have a very strange friendship.

"That reminds me," Yusuke says. "I have something I wanted to give you, Akira--I'll be right back."

He goes running up to the attic, which leaves Sojiro alone in the café with Futaba and Akira. And the cat, who doesn't really count, of course, but on the other hand the kids keep talking to him like he can really understand them. Sojiro's starting to feel like he's in the minority because he hasn't started talking to the cat _like he's a person_.

"Think he'll be okay?" Futaba asks Akira, and it's quiet enough in the room that even though she keeps her voice down, Sojiro hears her.

"Yeah," Akira says, even more quietly. "After that news conference, we know for sure that he had his change of heart. So everything'll be fine now."

There's something about that comment that rubs Sojiro the wrong way, and he frowns before catching Futaba's eye.

"Hey," he says. "You two."

She looks up at him with a deer-in-headlights, _who, me?_ look.

"Yeah," Sojiro says. "Both of you come over here for a minute."

They're both a little slow in coming over, which probably means that he'd sounded harsher than he meant to. But they do eventually come, and Sojiro says, "Listen. I know it's probably tempting to think that something flashy and attention grabbing like those ghost thieves--"

"That's not the _name_ ," Futaba protests. 

"Ghost thieves, phantom bandits, whatever they're called." He waves a hand dismissively. "The point is that whatever they did to convince Madarame to confess, blackmail or whatever it was, _that's_ not what's going to really help Yusuke."

"I kind of think it is," Futaba says, after a pause. "I mean, his sensei was being pretty awful to him. And now they've changed his heart."

"No," Sojiro says. 

"But--"

"I'm trying to give you two a compliment, Futaba," Sojiro says, with slight exasperation. "Because you didn't bother with anything big or flashy like the Phantom Thieves did." He pauses for a split second, checking their expressions to make sure he'd gotten it right this time. "You just saw that your friend was in a bad situation," he continues. "You got him out of there, and you're helping him figure out his living situation. It might not seem as exciting to you two, but you absolutely helped your friend more than anything the Phantom Thieves did."

Futaba looks down at the ground. Akira grins. "I'm not sure if we're being complimented or not," he says.

"It's a compliment," Sojiro tells him. "I'm not trying to play down what you did. It was good. Better than what the Phantom Thieves did to Madarame."

Futaba snorts like she's trying hard to fight back a laugh, and just can't manage it. Sojiro shakes his head and waves the two teenagers away. Maybe he _is_ being a little sappier than he needs to be. But... he likes what he's seen today. They're a weird couple of kids, his ex-shut in and the delinquent that's come to stay with them. But they're doing alright.

They're doing good.

And then Yusuke comes clattering back downstairs, and Sojiro eases back into place behind the counter, conversation finished.

-//-

_June 5_

_Afternoon_

-//-

"Happy birthday," Yusuke announces, when he comes back downstairs with a small bag in his hands.

Akira has actually forgotten that today is his birthday.

Dojima and Nanako had called him early about it, and Yu had texted him his happy birthday message. But today is the day of Madarame's press conference, and that had honestly driven everything else right out of Akira's mind. Sure, the change of heart had gone off perfectly with Kamoshida, but that hadn't stopped Akira from stressing all day about how it's going to go with Madarame, and right up until Yusuke comes downstairs with the birthday gift in hand, he hadn't given a second thought to the fact that he's seventeen now.

"It's not his birthday," Futaba says, then adds to Akira, " _Is_ it your birthday?"

"It's my birthday," he confirms.

"You didn't say anything!"

"I had a couple other things on my mind," he points out.

Futaba scoffs. "You're not getting anything from me if you don't even tell me when your birthday is," she informs him. 

"Okay."

She gives him some impressive side eye for a second, then says, "Mine's February 19th."

"Noted," Akira says, and catches the glint in her eye that means he had _really_ better make sure and buy her a present when her birthday rolls around. 

Yusuke holds the bag up. "So is this still a good time, or...?"

Akira takes the offered present. "Thanks, Yusuke," he says.

"It's not very much," Yusuke says. "I don't exactly have a lot of money right now, because of... everything, so--"

"Don't worry," Akira says quickly, and reaches into the bag.

His hand brushes up against what feels like a deck of cards, and pulls out--

"How did you get _these_?" he asks, spreading the handful of skill cards out on the table in front of him. He's been picking them up sporadically in Palaces and Mementos since the start of the year, and they're great when he can get them, but so rare that he's nervous about ever actually _using_ them. The ability to give a specific skill to one of his Persona is extremely helpful, but there's always this worry in the back of his mind that he'll use one today and need it for a different Persona tomorrow.

(Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Sojiro glance over at them, see a handful of apparently unimportant cards, and then lose interest)

"I collected blank ones from..." Yusuke also shoots a glance in Sojiro's direction before choosing his words. "From the museum. I didn't know what they were for, but I know I've seen you get excited about them, so a couple days ago I called Yu and asked if he knew what they were." He shrugs. "He explained it to me, and we even met up in so he could test a couple of them and make sure they would work."

"Why wouldn't they...?"

But then he notices the slightly raised texture of the card under his fingers, the way the design hasn't been so much printed as painted, and he asks, "You made this?"

Yusuke nods. "I didn't have too much time to put it all together," he says. "I couldn't think of any gift ideas for a while, and then when I finally did, it was too late to do more than a few, so..."

Sure, but the fact that Yusuke can do this at all is _crazy_. He can just pick up blank skill cards and make them into functional copies? "That's incredible," Akira tells him. "Honestly, I have no idea how you do any of this stuff with your paintings--" He doesn't dare say anything more specific with Sojiro around, but he's sure that Yusuke knows what he means. "But it's amazing."

"So..." Yusuke looks relieved. "It sounds like you like it?"

"I'm already planning how to use them." He has a few Persona in mind that could use the extra skills, and now that he knows Yusuke can do this, he doesn't have to be _quite_ as careful about when he uses the cards. And with the new threat of fake Igor hovering over everything, any little thing he can do to improve his Persona without going through the Velvet Room is incredibly helpful. "The timing on this could not have been better," he says.

Yusuke nods. "If you ever need more, I can keep painting them for as long as you have blank cards."

"I will probably take you up on that," Akira says.

Later, when he's on his own upstairs, feeling tired but relieved that the press conference is finally _over_ , and they know for sure that Madarame's heart has been changed, he pulls out his phone and texts Yu.

> **Yu**
> 
> So you and Yusuke are working together behind my back? ;)
> 
> I guess he gave you your birthday present?
> 
> Yeah. It's going to be so so so helpful
> 
> I figured
> 
> Have you been back to the Velvet Room yet?

Akira starts to answer several times, typing a few words before deleting them and starting over completely. Finally he manages something.

> **Yu**
> 
> I had a dream about it a couple days ago. Fake Igor said some stuff about beating Madarame's Palace, but it was just a couple minutes and then I woke up
> 
> And that's it? You haven't been back while you're awake?
> 
> I don't know what I'd say if I did
> 
> I know the Igor in the Velvet Room isn't the real Igor, but I don't know who he is. I don't know how that ties into the twins. I don't know anything
> 
> So are you just planning to never go back?
> 
> I don't know
> 
> Maybe?

It's Yu's turn to take a long time to reply, and Akira can imagine him tapping away at his phone, writing things out and then erasing them, trying to find the right words.

> **Yu**
> 
> I don't think you can just stay out of the Velvet Room
> 
> I hate the idea of you spending any more time than you have to around dangerous enough to take out Igor, but you need to be able to summon and fuse Persona
> 
> I've been okay before now without being able to do that
> 
> You haven't been leading a team before now
> 
> You haven't been going through Palaces and changing hearts before now
> 
> You haven't needed the strength like you need it right now
> 
> Okay, okay, I get it
> 
> And honestly... I don't know. I feel weird leaving the twins alone there. I said I don't know what's going on with them, and I really don't, but
> 
> I don't think they're in on whatever fake Igor is up to
> 
> So you'll go back, and you'll be careful?
> 
> Yeah. And who knows, maybe I'll learn something
> 
> That's another thing. We desperately need more information if we're going to figure out what's going on
> 
> Well... I'll do my best
> 
> Good luck. And if anything happens, or you need help or anything...
> 
> I'll let you know
> 
> ahhhhhh Akechi just texted me I have to go deal with that now
> 
> Good luck with that too, I guess?
> 
> :(

-//-

_June 5_

_Evening_

-//-

Akechi waits to reach out to Akira until he sees the press conference that Madarame gives on Sunday afternoon. 

He could have done it earlier. He'd heard about the Phantom Thieves' calling card, and then kept a close eye on the entry in his version of the metanav for Madarame's Palace. He's been there before, with Loki and wearing his black mask, to keep an eye on him just like he keeps an eye on most of the other palace rulers in Tokyo that are in any way connected to Shido and his conspiracy. 

He'll have to be dealt with by other people, now. Akechi can do a lot with those people that have Palaces, or at least a Shadow somewhere in Mementos, but Madarame doesn't have either of those anymore. Whatever happens to him next, however they deal with him to make sure that the next thing he confesses won't be his connection to Shido--

Well, that's going to have to happen entirely in the real world. It's not Akechi's problem anymore. 

(It should, if anything, be a minor relief that he has one less thing in his life to keep on top of)

(It's not. Instead, he feels off balance by the fact that this new team of Persona-users is striking out at random, meddling in what has been years of effort)

The evening after the press conference, Akechi decides that he can't wait any longer to say something, and sends a text out to Akira. If they keep taking out Palace rulers without any discernible rhyme or reason, they might accidentally take out someone more important than Madarame. 

> **Akira Kurusu**
> 
> I saw the press conference. Congratulations
> 
> Thanks :) 
> 
> So I take it that you're probably between projects at the moment, since you've just finished changing Madarame's heart
> 
> If you're asking if we're working on another Palace, no we're not
> 
> I've been putting some more thought into our last conversation. We talked about whether you would all be willing to take on a target of my suggestion
> 
> I remember. You didn't have anyone in mind then, but it sounds like you do now?

He does. A target that he expects a group of idealistic _Phantom Thieves_ would jump at, and someone that has started to make things uncomfortable for Shido. It's not a particularly urgent matter, but it'll clean up a loose thread, and it'll keep the Phantom Thieves busy. Two birds, one stone.

> **Akira Kurusu**
> 
> Yes
> 
> You may not have heard of him, but the name is Kunikazu Okumura

No answer for a long time.

> **Akira Kurusu**
> 
> Okumura?
> 
> Yes. He's the CEO of Okumura Foods. The company that runs Big Bang Burgers
> 
> And... he has a Palace?
> 
> Oh yes

A particularly large and sprawling one, that Akechi has only ever been able to access in a limited way because of a DNA lock on a door near the entrance. He's a little curious whether the Phantom Thieves will be able to get through that--either they'll find a way, which will be interesting, or they'll waste who knows _how_ long trying to figure it out.

He's hoping they will figure it out.

Because if they do, and he's with them, he'll finally have access to the man's Shadow. And once he has access to that...

Well, Okumura's been making noises about moving into politics. Shido's making his big move toward being prime minister, and he doesn't need anyone else making waves right now. Akechi knows that moves are being made toward eliminating him in _some_ way, and eliminating his Shadow would be one way of doing that.

> **Akira Kurusu**
> 
> I'd need to think about it
> 
> And run it by the others
> 
> I understand. I remember that you said you wouldn't take anything on without getting agreement from everyone
> 
> I'll... get back to you
> 
> I'll wait while you talk to them. You know how to get in contact with me when you're done
> 
> But look him up. He's been involved with several suspicious business deals, and several of his competitors have had... unfortunate things happen to them.
> 
> Is that how you found out he has a Palace? You were investigating all these shady business things?

Sure, why not.

> **Akira Kurusu**
> 
> Yes
> 
> Let me know what you all think after you talk to the others

He pockets his phone without waiting to see if Akira's going to respond. He has a feeling the answer will, eventually, be yes. There's enough online rumors and griping about Okumura to convince the kind of group that says their motive is to _change hearts_ that he's a decent target. 

Maybe these Phantom Thieves can be useful after all. He'd been hopeful at first, when it was just the two clueless new Persona-users, and then thought it was over when Akira and his literal years of metaverse experience had gotten involved.

But maybe not. Maybe, by suggesting just the right targets, he can still get something out of this unexpected group of new Persona-users that have stumbled into his plans. 

-//-

Akira sits on his bed with his phone in his hands and googles Kunikazu Okumura. He's not looking for what Akechi had told him to look for, the sketchy business stuff or the competitors who'd had unfortunate things happen to them.

He finds what he's looking for on the first page of search results. An old news article about some fancy party where Kunikazu Okumura had appeared with his daughter, Haru.

There's no way they can do anything about this Palace. Haru's his friend, and he can't just go sticking his nose into her family business. It's not the same as it had been with Yusuke, who was in danger of being arrested if they didn't do anything about Madarame. Haru's happy, right? She's doing fine, with her dad and everything.

They're not going to do anything about this Palace.

-//-

_June 6_

_After School_

-//-

Lunch has been awkward over the past few days, and Haru isn't exactly sure why. She still meets with Akira and Makoto every day, and they still talk about gardening, and about school, and...

And _not_ about the Phantom Thieves.

Haru really doesn't know why, but they've stopped discussing the Phantom Thieves at all. She might have thought it was because their new suspicion that Akira is one of them, except that she and Makoto have stopped discussing the Phantom Thieves even among the two of them. It doesn't... _feel_ right, for some reason, to be trying to find the Phantom Thieves. 

But today is different. Today, they have to talk about the Phantom Thieves, because yesterday the news had broken that they had stolen Madarame's heart. The man had _confessed,_ and that means... what, exactly? 

(It means that they really can do what they say they can)

(They really can change hearts)

She'd called Makoto yesterday, right after the press conference. And they'd agreed that after all that, they need to find out, for sure, whether Akira is part of the Phantom Thieves. 

Haru knows why she's doing this. Because Akira is her friend, and because... well, because deep down she wants to believe in all of this. But she's _not_ sure why Makoto is doing this, whether it's still for the principal or if she's curious herself. Over the past few days, Makoto seems to have cooled considerably on the idea of finding the Phantom Thieves just for the principal and his promised letter of recommendation.

(Something has changed, for both of them. And Haru has no idea what that _is_ )

They'd floated a few different ways to confront Akira about their suspicions, but Haru's idea had been the one they eventually decided to go with.

She has someone whose heart she'd like to see changed. She'd been thinking about putting a request on the phan site already. And she thinks honestly that if she brings it up to Akira, she'll know from his reaction whether he knows anything.

Maybe. Sometimes he's--sometimes it feels like he's surprisingly good at hiding things.

But it's worth a try, and that's why she finds him after school, and asks if he minds walking to the station with her.

"Sure," he says, after a second of surprise. "But you don't usually take the train, do you?"

No, she's usually picked up by a driver after classes are over. But it's not unheard of for her to take the train home, and so she smiles and says that she's in the mood for a change.

"I don't actually want to get home too early," she admits, as they head for the school doors.

"Is something going on?" Akira asks.

She hesitates.

The details of her father, her fiancé, her arranged marriage, none of those are things that she wants to talk to people about. It's not fun, to admit that her life is completely outside of her own control. 

But she explains now to Akira, telling him everything, and ending with the admission that she's weighing whether to put either her father or her fiancé's name on the Phan site.

Akira looks absolutely horrified when she's done with all this. "You're serious?" he asks. "Your dad really...?"

"Yes," Haru says softly. She doesn't want to look at him, but forces herself to look up and meet his eyes. There's unhidden sympathy on his face, but what does that mean, exactly? A Phantom Thief might be sympathetic. So might a friend.

"And you would really ask for him to have his heart changed?" Akira asks.

"I'm not sure if I should," she says. "I'm not sure if it would help, or if I would just be putting his name out there for everyone to see."

Akira doesn't say anything for a long time.

"Do you think I should put his name on the website?" Haru presses.

"I don't think it could hurt," Akira says. "You don't have to explain everything that you just said to me, if you're worried about everyone else being able to see it."

"Do you think the Phantom Thieves would do anything, though?" she asks. "Without the explanation?"

"I think it's worth a try," Akira says, and Haru _absolutely cannot tell_ if he's saying it as a friend or as a Thief. Is he saying _I really hope this works out for you_ , or is he saying _I hear what you just said, and I'll make sure his heart changes_?

"Alright," she says. "I'll put his name up there, and... see what happens."

Akira bites his lip for a second, and then after a minute's indecision, says, "It'll be fine, Haru. I _really_ think it'll be fine."

"Akira..." 

She wants to ask, right here and right now, if he's a part of the Phantom Thieves. She wants to just know, for certain, whether she and Makoto are on the right track or if they've gone completely insane. 

But if he is a Phantom Thief, he'll lie to her face. If he's not, he'll be hurt that they suspect him.

"Can I ask you a kind of weird question, Haru?" Akira asks.

"Go ahead," Haru says, relieved to have the conversation moving in a different direction, so that she won't have to make the choice of whether to ask him or not.

"Have you ever met an Akechi Goro?"

That _is_ kind of a weird question. "No," she says. "Although I think I've heard the name somewhere."

"He's a detective," Akira says. "I met him back at the beginning of the year, and we're kind of--friends?" He says this last word in a way that implies he's holding it at arm's length to stop it from getting too close.

"No," Haru says. "I don't know him. Why?"

"No particular reason," Akira says. "It's just--a weird coincidence, I was talking to him last night and your dad's name came up."

"Why is a detective talking about my father?" Haru asks, suddenly concerned. She wants her father's heart changed, she wants him to be the way she remembers him, but she doesn't want him to get into real trouble.

Akira is quick to try and reassure her. "It wasn't--I mean, it really didn't sound like he was investigating him for anything official. We were just talking about a few different things, and his name came up. I didn't..." He hesitates. "I didn't know that he was the CEO of some big food company."

"I don't like to talk about it much," Haru says. "It's..." She' never found a way to explain how isolating it is, to have a kind of life that no one else has. She knows that she's lucky, of course, that things could have been so much harder than they are. But her life has struggles and difficulties, like anyone else, and the people around her have such different lives that it's--hard, sometimes.

It gets less hard when she doesn't mention the money. So she doesn't.

It's a little strange that Akira knows now, actually, and Haru watches his face carefully for any change in expression that might give her an idea of how he's feeling. Now he knows about her arranged marriage, about her father, and about Okumura Foods.

"Hey," he says. "Instead of heading right to the train, do you want to make a trip out to that gardening store we were talking about at lunch the other day? It's almost summer, we can start picking out what we want to grow while the weather's getting warmer."

That's all he's going to say?

He notices the frown, and says, "I mean, if you're busy--"

"No, no," she says quickly. "Let's go and take a look. I was thinking, actually, about summer break. I know it's not until the end of July, but we won't have access to the school rooftops, and we'll really have to think about how we're going to handle that..."

The conversation drifts sideways onto more comfortable topics, and by the end of the afternoon Haru feels like she knows significantly more about summer gardening, but absolutely nothing else about whether Akira is a Phantom Thief.

-//-

_June 7_

_After School_

-//-

"We have something important to talk about," Akira says on Tuesday afternoon, when the Phantom Thieves meet in his attic bedroom to talk strategy. "I think I have a lead on a Palace that we could tackle next, but it would be--more complicated than the other ones we've done."

"They've all been complicated," Yusuke points out.

"I know," Akira says. "But this one's going to be _more_ complicated, because it was Akechi's idea."

As he'd expected, this gets everyone's attention.

"He actually suggested a Palace he wants us to do?" Ann asks. "I know you said he might, but--I kind of thought he'd forgotten about it."

"He texted me on Sunday after the press conference," Akira says. "And I didn't say anything at first, because--honestly, because the target he has in mind is Haru's dad."

"Wait," Ryuji says. "Haru like the same Haru from the Phantom Thief finding group?"

"I'm also in the Phantom Thief finding group," Akira points out.

"Well, yeah," Ryuji says. "But you're also a Phantom Thief, so that doesn't count."

Akira shrugs. Both Haru and Makoto have been weirdly quiet lately about even trying to figure out who any members of the Phantom Thieves are. "It's the same Haru," he agrees. "And I didn't want to start meddling in her family's business on _Akechi's_ advice, but then I had another conversation with Haru yesterday and she asked me to change his heart too."

"She asked you?" Futaba asks. "She actually asked _you_ to--"

"I mean, she asked me if I thought it would be a good idea to put his name on the website," Akira corrects himself. "But it's basically the same thing."

"It's up there now," Yusuke confirms, holding up his phone for the others to see. "It just has his name, and it was posted anonymously."

"Why does she want his heart changed?" Ann asks.

"And why does Akechi?" Yusuke adds.

Akira summarizes both requests as quickly as he can. Akechi's point about Okumura's business dealings is easy to verify. Akira has already done some digging himself online, and now that Futaba is involved, she's able to find even more information. 

"I think he's definitely someone that deserves to have his heart changed," Futaba says at last. "The information available online would be enough to convince me, but..."

"But the arranged marriage thing is even _worse_ ," Ann finishes.

Futaba nods emphatically. "That's just gross," she says.

"We still need to worry about Akechi, though," Akira says. "I mean, I don't trust the guy at all. 

There's a chorus of responses of the ' _well of course not_ ' variety. 

"If he wants us looking at Okumura's Palace," Akira says. "There has to be some other reason for it. He's not asking us to change Okumura's heart just to be a good guy."

"No," Morgana says thoughtfully. "But--we do need to know more about him, and this might a really good way to find that out. I mean, he still doesn't know that we know to be suspicious of him. He might not be as careful as he really needs to be."

"And it actually _is_ going to do some good," Ann says. "Whatever Akechi has in mind, if we change Okumura's heart, it _is_ going to help Haru, and it _is_ going to help those employees that are complaining online."

"So..." Ryuji makes a face. "Are we doing it?"

"I'm going to be honest," Akira says. "If Akechi wasn't interested in Okumura, I'd have said yes in a heartbeat. You should have seen Haru when she was explaining what her dad's done. None of you guys really know her that well, but she's a good person. She's a friend, and... I know I don't really have any right to ask the rest of you to help her just because she's a friend of mine, but--"

"Of course you do," Ryuji interrupts. "Come on, man. If it was one of our friends, we know you'd want to help us."

"And even if she was a stranger," Yusuke adds. "What her father is doing to her still wouldn't be right."

"So it sounds like we're all in agreement?" Akira asks, looking around at the rest of them. "We're going to tell Akechi that we're going into Okumura's Palace?"

"Yeah," Morgana says. "I think that's the plan."

Akira lets out a breath and nods. "Then... I guess I'll text him sometime tonight. It sounds like he's seen the Palace already, so he should be able to get us the keywords, and hopefully we'll be able to go in the next couple days."

"Do we want to try and figure them out ahead of time?" Futaba asks. "We might be able to go in and do some poking around before we have to go in with him."

Akira shrugs. "It's worth a shot," he says.

And so they spend the next hour and a half trying to figure out the keywords for Okumura's Palace. His name pops up with a result right away, and it doesn't take long to guess that the headquarters for Okumura Foods is the real world location. But they spend _ages_ trying to guess what his distortion might be, and eventually they run out of ideas completely and have to call it a day.

"You know what," Yusuke says. "I think that if Akechi managed to figure this out, I actually have a little bit more respect for him."

"Seriously?" Ryuji says.

"Just a little," Yusuke says.

"Well, he might have had more information to go on than we do," Akira points out. "He told me that he was already investigating some of those suspicious things that happened to his business rivals, so maybe he'd been looking into Okumura already." He sighs. "I don't know. But we're getting the keywords from him anyway, and it's not like he can lie about what those are."

"I'd still like to at least try and figure it out," Futaba says. "Can we wait just like... I don't know, a day or two?"

"Sure," Akira says. "If you figure it out, that's great. If not..." He shrugs. "Let me know and I'll tell Akechi what we decided."

They can wait a few days, at least. 

(Part of him wonders if Haru can--but this isn't going to be instantaneous, it's always hard work getting through a Palace, and... they'll do it as fast as they can)

-//-

_June 9_

_Afternoon_

-//-

"Oh _God_ ," Ann mutters, half an hour into their social studies field trip the following Thursday morning. "Did you guys see who the guest on this stupid TV show is going to be?"

It's the first of two days that their class is supposed to spend at a local TV station, and it's already off to a terrible start.

"No," Ryuji says. "Because _some of us_ got roped into manual labor right away."

"Is that where you two were?" Ann asks, distracted for the moment. She hasn't seen either of them around since the first few minutes after they got here, but she'd assumed they'd just wandered off somewhere.

Akira winces. "Yeah," he admits. "One of the production assistants had us moving cameras and things around."

"That seems like probably a bad idea," Morgana says from inside Akira's bag. "Those things are expensive, right? And Ryuji's a klutz."

"Hey!" Ryuji protests.

"Shh," Akira says, as half the group turns around to look at them. He waits until most of them have lost interest and gone back to their own conversations or looking at their phones or whatever they'd been doing before. Then, in a much quieter voice than the one Ryuji had used, he asks, "So who is it that's going to be on the show?" 

"Akechi," Ann says, and is rewarded by two looks of absolute shock on the boys' faces, and a noise that sounds much more cat-like than usual from inside Akira's bag.

"You're kidding," Akira says, when he recovers, and Ann is not even surprised at this point to see him smile. If there's one thing Akira enjoys more than anything, it's trouble. "That works out perfectly, I haven't had a chance to text him about Okumura's Palace yet."

"Did Futaba finally admit defeat on figuring out the keywords?" Ann asks.

"Not exactly," Akira says.

"She won't actually _admit_ it," Morgana clarifies. "But she was moping all over the café last night, and she did say Akira should go ahead and talk to Akechi."

"So I'll do it here, if I can get him alone," Akira says. "Then I'll get to see his reaction, too."

"Do you want the rest of us there when you talk to him?" Ann asks.

"If you want to be," Akira says. "I... honestly don't think that he thinks that _we_ think he's suspicious, so the more casual we can make it, the better."

As it turns out, the first time they see Akechi is when he comes onto the set for his interview.

"It's weird how different he is when he's in front of a crowd," Ann says.

"It's like he's wearing a mask in the real world," Akira says. "It's kind of creepy."

Since Akira himself is almost impossible to read when he doesn't want to be read, this seems like some kind of hypocrisy to Ann. But she likes Akira, and she's not a fan of Akechi, so she doesn't say anything.

The show starts, and Ann is not even surprised to see that today's subject is the Phantom Thieves. She's not _happy_ about it--Ryuji obviously is, judging by the way he suddenly starts paying attention--but they'd made the actual news after Madarame's press conference. Not just sketchy tabloids, like they had after Kamoshida's Palace, but the _actual news_. 

So it's not a surprise that this particular show is talking about the Phantom Thieves. Maybe it's even something they should have seen coming, since after all they'd booked Akechi, an actual detective, on for the day. Who else are they going to talk to about a group of thieves?

"So what do _you_ think of these so-called Phantom Thieves?" the host asks Akechi. Her voice is high pitched and bubbly and driving Ann a little bit up the wall.

"Well, it's hard to know what to make of them," Akechi says with an easy smile. "But if they really can do what they say they can do, then I'd say they're very dangerous, wouldn't you?"

"Are you kidding me?" Ryuji mutters. " _Dangerous_?"

"Shh," Ann hisses.

Akira leans forward, expression intense but unreadable.

"Dangerous?" the announcer repeats. "Could you elaborate on that a little bit more?"

"Well," Akechi says. "We don't know anything about how this supposed change of heart works. It's most likely a case of blackmail or something similar--how else could these Phantom Thieves convince people to spontaneously convince their victims to confess to the things they've done? Things that they have absolutely _no_ reason to want to have exposed to the general public."

"Why's he saying that?" Ryuji mutters, and at least he manages to keep his voice down this time. "He knows we're not blackmailing anyone."

"What else is he supposed to say?" Akira asks. "I'd rather have him saying something like this than getting on TV and spelling out what we're _actually_ doing. And he's a detective--it's not in his best interest to pretend he supports what the Phantom Thieves are doing."

"It's like how Akira pretends he's trying to help catch us when he's with Makoto and Haru," Morgana pipes up.

"I mean," Ryuji mutters. "I _guess_. But I can still complain about him, can't I?"

"Have at it," Akira says with a grin.

The interview continues on the set.

"You don't think that the two targeted by the Phantom Thieves deserved it?" the interviewer asks. "Suguru Kamoshida is currently under investigation for sexual abuse of a minor, and Ichiryusai Madarame has already had charges filed against him for fraud."

Akechi's smile is picture perfect. Ann, who feels cold at the announcer's mention of _sexual abuse of a minor_ , suddenly hates that smile. "And if they really are guilty of the crimes that they've been accused of committing, I truly hope that it's proved through the court system."

"Well, that's quite the interesting take on the subject," the interviewer says. "But let's see if we can get another opinion from our audience."

She stands and starts walking down the aisle of seats full of Shujin students, the camera following her until she stops, right in front of the aisle seat where Akira is still following the interview intensely.

"What do you think?" she asks. "Do you agree with our detective here?"

Akira stands up and Ann has to put her hand over her mouth to cover a laugh when she sees Akechi's expression.

-//-

( _Are you kidding me_ , Akechi thinks, as he looks out at the studio audience and sees what he should have spotted before)

(Fully _half_ the Phantom Thieves are sitting there, listening to him talk about them like they're criminals, _right_ when he needs them on his side--and if they have the cat with them, that's two thirds)

(These Thieves are exhausting)

-//-

Akira watches Akechi for a second or two longer than is strictly necessary. Then he smiles in a way that Ann, at least, recognizes as being completely inauthentic. "I mean," he says. "I know as much about how the Phantom Thieves did what they did as Akechi does."

Technically true, Ann thinks.

"And I guess that if they actually are just blackmailing these people," Akira continues. "Then he's right, that's a pretty terrible thing to do." His smile sharpens, just barely, _just_ for a second. "I mean, ruining someone's life just because you can? That's awful."

Naoto, Ann realizes with a jolt. The friend of his that Akechi had driven out of Tokyo. _That's_ what he's talking about, and no one else, not even Akechi, seems to realize it. Instead he looks vaguely relieved at the fact that Akira is (apparently) playing along.

"I'm glad you agree," Akechi says with a laugh that sounds slightly strained. Akira shrugs, gives him that same sharp smile, and sits down again.

"I seriously hope Akechi never figures out we're suspicious of him," Morgana mutters from inside the bag. "If those two ever get into an actual fight, I don't want to be anywhere _near_ it."

Ann, looking from one to the other, privately agrees.

-//-

_June 9_

_After School_

-//-

Akira keeps an eye open the rest of the day for an opportunity to catch Akechi on his own, but by the end of the day he still hasn't managed it.

"Well, there's always tomorrow," Ann says. "The field trip goes another day, and that announcer lady said they'd be having Akechi back for a second interview."

"I bet they don't ask Akira his opinion tomorrow," Morgana says. By this point, since they've been dismissed for the day and are heading home, Akira has unzipped his bag to let the cat poke his head out.

"Did I say something weird?" Akira asks, glancing down at Morgana.

"Not weird in a way that anyone else would notice," Morgana assures him.

"And I don't think even Akechi realized you were calling him out for Naoto," Ann adds.

"Is that what you were doing?" Ryuji asks.

Akira smiles sheepishly. "I know it was stupid," he says. "But I don't know. I just saw him up there and... I don't even mind that he was saying all that stuff about the Thieves, he _had_ to say something. But... he's just so fake. It bugs me."

"Well never mind that for today," Ann says firmly. "We don't usually come up to this area, so why don't we do something fun since we're out here?"

"Fun like what?" Ryuji asks. Then his face brightens. "Hey," he says. "Dome town's close to here, right?"

"That's the place that looks like a pancake?" Morgana asks. "Right?"

"I mean... I guess?" Ryuji says, giving Morgana a weird look. "Dunno if I'd describe it exactly like that, but..."

He trails off, and Akira has about half a second's warning, just from the unmistakable expression on Ryuji's face, that _Akechi_ is on his way over. He turns around and sure enough there's the detective.

"Hello," Akechi says. "I was hoping I'd run into all of you before you left."

"Same here," Akira says quickly. He's hoping to keep Akechi's attention on him, at least long enough for Ryuji to stop looking so unwelcoming. "We were just about to give up and head out, though."

"For... pancakes," Akechi says. "Right?"

"Pancakes...?" Akira's thrown for a second, then laughs. "No, we were actually talking about going to Dome Town, but apparently Morgana thinks it looks like a pancake."

"It _does,_ " Morgana insists.

"It really doesn't," Ryuji says.

Akira shakes his head, but inside he's thinking how _lucky_ they'd just gotten. Akechi had come around the corner just in time to hear Morgana's pancake comment, but if he'd been fifteen seconds faster they would have still been talking about how suspicious Akechi is.

"Do you want to walk out with us?" Akira asks. "I was going to text you sometime today anyway, but we might as well talk in person."

"Ah," Akechi says. "You've made a decision?"

Akira nods.

"Then of course," Akechi says. "I'll walk with you to the train station."

So out they go, four of the Phantom Thieves, and Akechi walking with them. "We've been looking up Okumura," Akira says, as soon as they're out of the building and relatively alone. "He looks like a good target."

"I thought you'd agree," Akechi says. "So you're willing to take his Palace on next?"

"We've talked it over," Akira says. "And we are. I'm guessing you have the keywords?"

Akechi nods. "Kunikazu Okumura, Okumura Foods Headquarters, and Spaceport."

" _Spaceport_?" Akira repeats. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"I'll be completely honest with you," Akechi says, and Akira has the weird feeling that he actually _is_ being honest. Possibly for the first time. "I have absolutely no idea."

"Well," Akira says. Spaceport? Seriously? "If that's what it is, then that's what it is."

"How'd _you_ figure it out?" Morgana asks.

"Half a Sunday afternoon and trying every noun in the dictionary until I found the right one," Akechi says.

"Fair enough," Akira says. "So I guess we'll all meet up inside the Palace whenever you're free?"

"I'm busy tomorrow," Akechi says. "With--you know. All this."

"Right," Ryuji says. "Wouldn't want to interrupt your busy interview schedule trashing the Phantom Thieves."

"I'm sorry about that," Akechi says. "I had no idea that any of you were there until that interviewer picked Akira to get an opinion from." He hesitates, then asks, "Did you all come here because of me, or...?"

"Social studies field trip," Akira tells him. "We were as surprised as you were."

"Well," Akechi says flatly. "What are the odds."

"Pretty good, I guess," Akira says. "Since it happened."

Akechi nods. "I guess that maybe I'll see you all tomorrow, maybe not. But I'll be free all day Sunday to meet at the Palace, if you're all free."

"Should be fine," Akira says. "If anything comes up, I'll let you know."

They're at the station by this point, so he and his friends head off in one direction while Akechi (thankfully, because how awkward would _that_ have been, if they were all together on the same train after that conversation?) goes in a different direction.

"Are we still going to Dome Town?" Ryuji asks. "Or are we just going home?"

Akira looks around at the other faces, all looking serious or even depressed after the confrontation with Akechi, and he figures--screw it. "Dome Town," he says. "We'll worry about Akechi on Sunday. For now, let's just go do something fun."

(He needs the distraction, anyway. He's just realized that now they're officially going into another Palace, he's out of excuses to keep avoiding the Velvet Room)

And it takes a little while, but by the time they get on the train and Dome Town comes into view (and the conversation has turned back to ribbing Morgana for calling it a pancake), the mood has improved dramatically. In fact, Akira doesn't think about Akechi at all until much later that evening, when his phone starts to vibrate excitedly with several incoming texts from Nanako.

> **Nanako**
> 
> You're on TV!
> 
> And talking about the Phantom Thieves?
> 
> Dad says to tell you that you shouldn't be going on TV saying stuff about the Phantom Thieves when you're the actual leader of the Phantom Thieves
> 
> Well you shouldn't be watching TV when you're supposed to be doing homework
> 
> I don't want to hear that from someone who spent all his time jumping _into_ the TV instead of doing his homework when he was my age

Nanako, Akira thinks, has been spending way too much time talking to Futaba.

> **Nanako**
> 
> :P
> 
> Speaking of Phantom Thief business, how are things going with your teacher?
> 
> Better. Dad's meeting with her next week and then I'm going to be moved into another classroom
> 
> I'm going to see if maybe he can get any clues about what her Palace is when he talks to her
> 
> Good thinking
> 
> I'm not sure he'll agree, but it's worth trying!
> 
> Anyway, be careful and don't do any more Phantom Thief interviews
> 
> Maaaaaaybe
> 
> Akira!

He doesn't answer, but as he puts his phone back in his pocket, he feels--better. It's easy to fall into the trap sometimes of feeling like he has to handle all this by himself. Him and his friends here. But he's not by himself. He has friends and a family that know what he's doing, who have his back, and...

And that makes a difference.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've mentioned this before, but I'm strongly considering bringing P5 Royal content into this fic after all.
> 
> I'm bringing it up again because I'm tentatively planning to have Maruki show up next chapter, _but_ I did originally say that there were going to be no Royal spoilers in this fic. So if there are objections to Royal content... I guess speak now or forever hold your peace O.o
> 
> Oh and also yes I did decide to move Okumura's Palace up. Because of... Honestly because of fake Igor related reasons that should hopefully become clear before the end of the Palace :p


	27. June 10 - June 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Question for anyone that is a p3 fan: is there a general consensus for what name the (male) protagonist goes by in fics? I'm thinking he's going to be name checked in the next chapter or two, and since I'm only up to mid-December in my p3 playthrough I haven't been reading any fics at all.

_June 10_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Over the years, Dojima has gotten used to having occasional uncomfortable conversations with the various teachers about his kids. Akira has been at the root of a lot of them of course, but to be fair, Akira has actually gotten good at keeping his trouble either out of school or out of sight as he gets older. And it's not that _every_ conference with a teacher has been Akira's fault, either. When Nanako had nearly died after being kidnapped in the first grade, there had been meetings about that, to get her back on track with her schoolwork. When Yu transferred in for his second year of high school and then back _out_ , there had been conferences about that. And today, he's here to talk to Nanako's teacher about the fact that she is making school a complete nightmare for her.

...and, for reasons that he does not entirely understand, he is _also_ here to talk to her about her subconscious view of herself and the school so that the kids can use that to break into her Palace and steal her heart.

This isn't a strictly fair view of the way things have worked out. He _does_ understand, by this point, the way that Palaces are supposed to work. He also understands that Ishikawa has one of her own, and that the same mental distortions that have caused her to lash out at Nanako are also feeding this Palace. He knows that the kids need to find out how Ishikawa sees the school so that they can get into her Palace and try to change her heart.

The part of it he doesn't understand is just how he's gotten pulled into it.

"I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me," he tells Ishikawa, as he joins her in the faculty office. Classes have just ended for the day--Dojima has taken an afternoon off from work to come here--so the room is not quite empty but certainly not full. A few other teachers work at their desks, and a boy about the same age as Nanako is talking to one of them on the other end of the room.

"I think everything's been cleared up already," Ishikawa tells him. Dojima notes the way that she doesn't ever meet his eyes as she says this, though, and he thinks--she's done something wrong and she _knows_ it. Part of him wants to zero in on this, police instincts telling him that it would be easy to get her to admit that the way she's been treating his daughter is cruel and unnecessary. It would make him feel better to hear it, he knows that.

If it wasn't for the kids, and their talk about Palaces, and Nanako's insistence that finding these keywords will help get a _good_ confession out of her, that it could maybe even help Ishikawa herself, Dojima would have _pushed_. But he'd been convinced by--well, by the sheer determination on Nanako's face when she'd brought up that last point. That if they can get into her Palace and change her heart, it might just help Ishikawa let go of her distortion and be happier. If Nanako can put up with this teacher making her life miserable ever since the start of the school year, and _still_ think it's worth trying to help her, that's... convincing.

"Unfortunately I still have a few questions," Dojima says. "I've heard Nanako's side of what's been going on in the classroom here, but I'd like to hear your version too."

Ishikawa frowns. "I'm sure that Nanako has her own reasons to be upset," she says. "But children of that age do have a habit of blowing things out of proportion. She's being moved into another class starting Monday, and hopefully she'll be able to do better there. I don't think that there's anything more to be said about it."

"I'd just like to hear a little bit more about your side of the story," Dojima insists. "Please. Just for my own peace of mind."

"It's over and done with," Ishikawa says, and Dojima can see that she's starting to lose her cool a little. She looks frazzled, and that's good--he presses a little harder, tries to angle the conversation around to the subject of the school itself.

"My daughter's at this school eight hours a day," he tells Ishikawa. "I think I have a right to know what happens to her while she's here. And since you're her teacher here, and since her time in your class has been so emotionally disruptive, I think that also means I have the right to know what you're doing with _your_ time in this sch--"

"Is _that_ what you think?" Ishikawa interrupts. 

There we go, Dojima thinks. She'd obviously been close to snapping already, so all he needs to do is apply a little bit more pressure. This had all started with Akira, hadn't it? With his arrest, and her involvement in it?

"Well," he says. "Considering that by all accounts it's your fault that Akira was arrested and sent away--" He does not miss the flash of emotions on her face. "I think that you could at least talk to me about how you've been treating my daughter."

"What happened to _him_ ," she says, with real venom. "Has nothing to do with how I teach."

Dojima shakes his head dismissively. "I think we both know that's not true," he says. "So I'm asking you what it is that happens in your classroo--"

"You and everyone else," Ishikawa interrupts, raising her voice now. On the other side of the room, the kid talking to his own teacher jumps a little at the sound and looks over at them nervously. One of the other teachers looks up from his paperwork and raises his eyes toward the ceiling for a second in an expression of dismissive exasperation.

(Dojima sees all this--the hurt in Ishikawa's voice, the fear on the kid on the other side of the room, the exasperation from the teacher--and he understands a little of why Nanako had said she wants to help this teacher that had hurt her)

(There are people that hurt others because they enjoy it. And there are people that hurt others because their lives have broken so badly that they don't see any other choice)

Ishikawa doesn't seem to notice any of the reactions that her outburst has garnered. "You have _no idea_ what it's like to be in this school every day," she says. "And have everyone think that whatever happens in your life is _their_ business. I'm sure you do think that the way I run my classes and the way I interact with my students is something that you have a right to come in and demand of me, but you are wrong."

Dojima waits, listening, with his eyebrows raised. This only seems to make her more angry, because she just keeps going.

"It's like working in a damn fishbowl," she says. "Everyone always wanting to know every detail about my life. Everyone thinking that because of what happened to me, they can just--"

She stops, her mouth closing so sharply it almost snaps. 

Complete silence descends over the room, until at last Dojima clears his throat and stands up. "I should probably go now," he says into the silence. He can see, just by the look on her face, that she's said everything--more than everything--that she intends to say. He wishes that she'd given him more to work with, but at least he has some idea of her frame of mind now. She obviously feels trapped and under surveillance here, and maybe that'll be enough for his kids to figure something out.

"Yes," Ishikawa says, in a distant voice. "Thank you for coming in this afternoon."

Dojima leaves the room, mentally organizing his thoughts so that when he gets home to what he's sure will be an impatiently waiting Nanako, he'll know what he's going to tell her.

Sure enough, conversation for the rest of the afternoon revolves around the meeting that he'd had with Ishikawa. He tells Nanako what he can remember, repeating it word for word as close as he possibly can while she listens. She's attentive and determined, and he feels a strange surge of pride in her for being so driven, even if it is in something as strange as all this.

"So did any of that help you?" he asks.

"I think it gave me a few things to try," Nanako says. She pulls out her phone and curls up on the couch to try whatever ideas she's gotten from his talk with Ishikawa. Dojima half listens as she tries a litany of words, her phone responding each time that there's no match.

And then after half an hour or so, he hears something new.

 _"Match detected,"_ the app announces, and Dojima looks up from his newspaper to find Nanako frowning at her phone in puzzlement.

"Did you figure out your keywords?" he asks.

"I... did," Nanako says. 

"You don't sound as happy as I thought you would," Dojima says. "Is it something dangerous?"

"Not exactly," she says. "It's just weird?" She holds her phone out, screen facing him, although he's too far away to actually see anything on it. "Her Palace is exactly what she told you she thought it was like to be inside the school."

He raises his eyebrows.

"It's a fishbowl," Nanako explains.

-//-

Later that evening, Nanako sends Akira a message to let him know that she's (finally) figured out Ishikawa's Palace keywords. 

> **Akira**
> 
> A fishbowl?
> 
> Well that Palace must be tiny, it'll be easy to get through :p 
> 
> But how does that even work?
> 
> No idea. Maybe it'll be a giant fishbowl?
> 
> Like an aquarium?
> 
> Who knows! I wonder if the whole Palace will be underwater
> 
> I hope not :o
> 
> Well just in case it is, maybe don't go in by yourself?
> 
> I definitely won't go in by myself. I don't have a Persona that can fight :(
> 
> Make sure whoever you go with can swim, okay?
> 
> There's no way it's going to be underwater
> 
> Right?
> 
> Who even knows anymore
> 
> :(
> 
> I'm going to see if Yu can come down soon-ish and take a look with me
> 
> Sounds good. You'll let me know if you need any help?
> 
> Are you going to run down here and do the Palace if I do need help?
> 
> You know I would
> 
> PROBATION, Akira :(
> 
> Yeah, well. You're more important

-//-

_June 11_

_After school_

-//-

On Saturday, the day before they're supposed to meet Akechi in Okumura's Palace, Akira goes with Yu to Mementos. They make small talk for a while about normal things (about the Thieves' plan for dealing with Akechi, and Nanako's teacher's Palace, and... and none of those things are actually normal, are they?) before eventually, inevitably, the conversation curves back around to why they're there.

This will be Akira's first trip into the Velvet Room since realizing that Igor isn't Igor.

"So am I just here for moral support?" Yu asks, as they stand against the wall, watching the Velvet Room door.

"Pretty much," Akira says. "Sorry, I know you're busy and everything, but--"

"You really think I don't want to be close by when you see..." There's a hesitation before Yu finishes, "Before you see Igor?"

Which is good, because Akira absolutely wants Yu to be close when he goes in to talk to Fake Igor, because while Yu won't actually be able to do anything if it all goes wrong, it'll at least make Akira feel better to know he's close.

"I should probably go in," he says. "Get it over with."

Yu sighs. "This should have been so much better for you," he says. "You shouldn't have to be on guard when you're in the _Velvet Room_." He says this in a tone almost of moral outrage, and Akira feels a spike of sudden, intense longing to be able to experience the Velvet Room the way that Yu had. He remembers what it had been like in Inaba, even if he'd only been there a few times. But it had been a little like a sanctuary, when he and Yu were fighting in the P-1 Tournament, hadn't it? He'd been grateful every time he ended up there, not on guard and tense the way the Velvet Prison here makes him feel.

"Yeah," Akira mutters. "Well, I guess that's not the way my life works." He takes a deep breath and heads over to where Justine is waiting for him, trying not to focus too much on the feeling of Yu watching his back. "Hey, Justine."

"Hello," she says, with the same cool smile she always gives him. "You haven't been here in a while. We were starting to wonder if something had happened."

"Nothing much," Akira says. "I've just been busy in the real world, but we're about to go back into another Palace, so..." He shrugs. "I thought it would be a good time to come in and fuse some Persona."

Justine actually smiles at him--not the cool and professional smile of a warden to a prisoner, but something genuinely happy that makes Akira suddenly feel guilty that he hasn't seen the twins in such a long time. And, as he starts to head for the door, she says softly, "You're always welcome to come see us. Even if you don't have business in the Velvet Room."

Akira bites his lip for a second. He still doesn't know who the twins are, or where they'd come from, or whether their loyalties really lie with the fake Igor that they work for. But the three of them have a bond that none of them understands, and Akira feels genuinely bad for them, most of the time. He thinks, honestly, that _he_ might know more about how the Velvet Room works than they do. 

"I'll keep that in mind," he tells Justine. 

She nods, and follows after Akira as he heads in through the Velvet Room door.

(Nothing's wrong, he reminds himself. Don't let him know that you know. You have to act like _nothing is wrong_ )

His normal metaverse outfit fades away into prisoner's rags as he steps through the door, and the weight of the chains on his wrists pulls his hands downward, and Akira thinks--how had he ever thought that this is how it's supposed to be? But he'd been so beaten down when he first came here, so... so _scared_ of what had happened to him after his arrest, that he'd seen this Velvet Prison and convinced himself that he deserves it.

"What took you so long, inmate?" Caroline demands, banging her nightstick against the bars of Akira's cell. "How do you expect to make any progress on your rehabilitation if you're never here?" Her tone is harsher than her sister's had been, but Akira reads some of the same excitement to see him on her face that he'd seen on Justine's. 

"It's been a busy few days," Akira tells her. "But I'll try not to take so long before I come back again."

"Good," Caroline says, and then unfortunately that seems to be as much conversation as she's in the mood for. Which means that the only person Akira still needs to talk to is Fake Igor himself.

"I have some fusions I need to take care of," he says. 

"Of course," Fake Igor says. "As always, the equipment here is at your disposal, in service of your rehabilitation."

Akira physically bites his tongue to keep from sassing back that there's nothing he's done that he wants to be rehabilitated _from_. He's made his share of stupid mistakes and wrong choices, but he's owned up to them whenever and however he can. He'll make up for them on his own terms, and he doesn't need anyone else telling him that he's broken and wrong and needs to be rehabilitated and fixed.

Especially not if that someone else is Fake Igor.

Akira fuses Persona for the next fifteen minutes. He doesn't talk much while while he's working his way through his mental list of which Persona he needs to hold onto and which ones should be fused. There's a bare minimum of conversation that needs to take place, but that's mostly between him and the twins, not him and Igor. And he's not _usually_ very chatty while he's fusing Persona, because--honestly, because it's just awful, watching his Persona being executed for fusions. So no one seems to think it's too strange that he's quiet today, at least.

More than once, as he runs through the list of Persona to fuse, Akira considers saying... something. To bait Fake Igor the way he'd called out Akechi at the TV station for what he'd done to Naoto. But he's not actually that stupid, he _does_ realize that there's a difference between between Akechi who has his own agenda but is at least human, and Fake Igor who is a complete and powerful mystery.

This is trouble, _bad_ trouble, not the kind that Akira can bluff his way out of. It's the kind of trouble that demands patience, demands that he keep quiet and bite his tongue as much information as he can. It demands, at the bare minimum, that he not do anything to tip Fake Igor off while he's locked in a literal _prison_ cell, at the imposter's mercy. So Akira stays quiet, or at least as quiet as he normally is while he's here, and apart from a little bit of back and forth with the twins while he's on his way out, he hardly says anything. 

(But he watches, every second, Fake Igor. His expression and his posture and the things that he says and does)

(He waits--he'll wait as long as he has to--for a clue or a sign or any indication at all of what is going on)

And then he's back in Mementos, leaning against one of the still disgusting walls near the door, eyes closed behind his mask. 

Yu's there, almost immediately. "Did everything go okay?" he asks. 

"Fine," Akira says. "I think my tongue actually _hurts_ from how hard I was biting it to keep from saying anything stupid, but it went fine. Nothing weird."

"You'll be okay from now on?" Yu asks. "When you have to go back again, you'll be...?"

"Who _knows_ ," Akira mutters. Then at a more normal volume, he says, "But... yeah, you don't have to stick around outside every time I go in from now on." He gives Yu a crooked smile. "Thanks for being here today, though."

"Is..."

He starts, and realizes that in his relief to be away from Igor and out of the Velvet Room, he hadn't even considered the fact that of course Justine would follow him back to Mementos.

"Is something wrong?" Justine finishes, uncertainly.

Akira opens his mouth, and then hesitates before lying. Because he's seen clues, here and there, that the twins are scared of Igor. And even if they won't tell him--or don't _know_ \--why they're afraid, the fact is that they still have to be with him almost all the time. They don't get to just walk away from the Velvet Room like Akira can. 

"Akira..." Yu says.

Be _careful_ , the warning note in his voice says.

But--no. This is Akira's game to play, not Yu's, and he'd _meant_ it days earlier when he said to Yu that he wasn't planning to keep following the rules. If that means trying to win the twins to his side, and away from Igor, that's absolutely on the list of things he's willing to do. He turns with sudden decisiveness toward her. He can't say anything to Igor, but he needs to talk to the twins.

He's significantly taller than Justine is, so he sits cross legged on the ground in front of her, bringing himself closer to her level. He meets her one good eye, and hopes that she'll listen to him. "Will you keep a secret for me?" he asks. "Not from Caroline, obviously, but from--from Igor."

He expects indecision, and he sees it there on her face, for a moment. It passes with almost surprising quickness. "Yes," she says.

It's the bond between them, Akira thinks. The one between himself and Justine and Caroline that _none_ of them remembers forming but is still there anyway, apparently as strong as it can possibly be. "We don't think," Akira says slowly. "That the Igor in the Velvet Room is the real Igor."

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Yu shifting nervously. If it had been up to Yu, Akira's guessing that this conversation wouldn't be happening right now. Yu's more careful than he is, and he would have waited before saying anything to the Velvet Room attendants about their suspicions of the Velvet Room. He doesn't say anything, though, and lets Akira make his own choices.

"What... makes you think that?" Justine asks.

Akira gestures to Yu. "He knew Igor a few years ago," he explains. "And it took us a while, but when we finally got around to comparing notes, we realized..." Her face is suddenly very difficult to look at, confused and hurt and betrayed. "We realized that we weren't dealing with the same person," Akira continues softly. "And we know that the version _he_ dealt with was the real one because--" Because the one here is a complete jerk, and because he'd had the message carved onto his arm that Igor is fake. 

"Because things are... wrong here," Justine says. 

He thinks about earlier conversations with the twins. They've been nervous about Igor for a while now, haven't they? Maybe not nervous enough to leap to the conclusion that Igor isn't even actually Igor, but still nervous.

(And they're just _kids_ , aren't they? They don't know anything about the real world, they barely know anything about the Velvet Room, all they have is one another, and Igor, and Akira)

"You can't let him know that we're suspicious," Akira says. "But you should both know."

Justine nods. "I can tell Caroline, too," she says. "But--I don't understand how--" She shakes her head, troubled and confused. "I don't understand how it could have happened."

"We're working on figuring that out too," Akira admits. "But I'm hoping you and your sister will be..." It sounds like such a longshot, doesn't it? Asking two Velvet Room attendants to turn against their master and side with him, instead. "I guess I'm just asking you to trust me," he says. 

Justine nods. "I know what you're asking of us," she says.

"And do you trust me?" Akira asks.

Justine nods. "I do."

-//-

_June 12_

_Morning_

-//-

Akechi arranges to meet the Phantom Thieves in Okumura's Palace at noon on Sunday, and so he arrives at 11:30 himself to get a lay of the land before they do. He's expecting to be the first one there, and so he's surprised when he finds two of them there ahead of them.

It's the cat and the nervous girl--Morgana and Futaba Sakura. She's already summoned her Persona, and judging by the scrap of conversation Akechi hears before they notice him, she's using it to do some kind of scan of the area.

"...think the Shadows here are going to be a lot stronger than they were in Madarame's Palace," he hears, but then the cat notices Akechi, elbows her in the leg, and she lets her Persona vanish.

"I wasn't expecting to see any of you here yet," Akechi says, slipping without effort into his usual pleasant demeanor.

"Yeah, well." Futaba shrugs and looks at him through the weirdly large goggles she has instead of a mask, and does not seem impressed. "We thought it'd be pretty weird to just have a bunch of teenagers show up here at the same time." It's a lot more direct of an answer than Akechi had been expecting, actually, based on the way she'd acted when he met her in the Palace near Shujin. He wonders if his mental label of shy one had been as accurate as he'd assumed. "There's not a lot of reason for people our age to be hanging around here.

"So everyone else is on their way?" Akechi asks.

"Yeah," Morgana says. "Joker and Fox should be here in a few minutes."

"Skull and Panther are running a little bit late," Futaba adds. "So probably they won't be here until close to noon."

"Maybe a little after noon," the cat says. 

Futaba nods and shrugs, and Akechi makes a mental note that at least one of those two must be the usual latecomer.

And that seems to be about as much as she's planning to say, which leaves Akechi in the undesired position of figuring out how to make small talk with the Phantom Thieves. He's still mentally scrolling through topics when Morgana breaks the silence.

"So are you going to use a codename while you're with us?" he asks.

"I wasn't planning on it," Akechi says. "I'm not exactly part of your group. I'm just here because we have a common goal for right now in Okumura's Shadow."

"Sure," Futaba says. "But we don't use the codenames because they're cool."

"We don't _just_ use the codenames because they're cool," Morgana corrects. "Palaces are born from the desires of a person's heart, right? We don't want to run around inside our target's actual hearts using our real names."

Akechi nods, slowly. He's never worked with anyone else inside a Palace before, so he's never had a chance to worry about whether anyone was using his name, or if it might be a bad idea. But--it _is_ a valid point that giving away information too freely might somehow filter through the subconscious of whoever had created the Palace. "Alright," he says. "So how do you pick these codenames, anyway?"

"They're usually just related to our Persona or our costumes," Morgana says, and Akechi forces himself not to look uncomfortable as the two of them suddenly seem to be sizing him up.

"Pinocchio," Futaba announces, her eyes lingering on Akechi's mask.

" _Excuse_ me?" Akechi says.

"You know." She smirks. "Because the nose on your mask is so long."

"No," Akechi says. 

"Bird, then," Futaba says. "Or beak? It kind of looks like a beak."

"Bird," Akechi repeats, with no enthusiasm whatsoever.

"Maybe a specific type of bird," Futaba says, as if this is a compromise.

"How about Flamingo?" Morgana suggests.

Akechi is starting to feel like he might possibly be getting teased, and he's almost grateful when a pair of footsteps behind him announces the arrival of two more of the Phantom Thieves. 

"Joker!" Futaba calls. "Fox, you guys are just in time. We're just trying to figure out a codename for this guy."

"I flatly refuse to be called Flamingo," Akechi says.

"Uh." Akira looks thrown. "Do I want to ask how we got around to Flamingo as a suggestion?"

"His mask looks like a beak," Morgana says. "I don't know a lot of red birds, but flamingos are pink, so that's pretty close."

"Cardinals are red," Akira says.

"But Flamingo is easier to remember as a codename," Futaba says, which is true but only because Flamingo is so blatantly ridiculous that no one would ever forget it.

"She has a point," Yusuke says, nodding so seriously that Akechi is now _convinced_ he's being mocked.

"Can I just choose my own codename?" he asks, trying to hide his annoyance.

"Let's compromise," Akira says, and there's a grin on his face as he says this, so Akechi is sure that he's enjoying this. "You can choose, but it has to be a bird."

"Why," Akechis say flatly.

"Because they're right," Akira says. "Your mask really does look like a beak."

"Fine," Akechi says, and thinks about it for a few seconds before landing on a name he thinks he can live with. And, as a bonus, it really does a better job of describing his black mask than it does this red one. He finds that he likes the idea of the Thieves using it, and having no idea why he'd really chosen it. "Crow," he says. "How's that?"

"It would work better if your mask wasn't quite so red," Yusuke says.

"But it's fine," Akira says with a shrug, which is lucky because Akechi is _this_ close to finding the nearest wall to hit his head against if they didn't drop the Flamingo thing. "Crow's good. It makes more sense than Mona's, anyway."

The conversation tumbles sideways into teasing Morgana at this point, and around the time that someone asks him if he'd picked his codename based off the Mona Lisa--

( _"l absolutely did not, will you let that go?"_ )

\--Akechi is feeling slightly less personally targeted. He hasn't seen the Phantom Thieves all together in a very long time, and they seem to have grown closer as a team since then. Close enough, in any case, that their communication has evolved (devolved?) into being at least 30% just... teasing and sarcasm.

...well, it's better than what he'd assumed at first, which is that they were mocking him because they hadn't wanted him, specifically, to join in their trip through this Palace. Now he's thinking that no, maybe this is just how they all are. 

He's thought a lot about his strategic reasons for taking the Phantom Thieves through this Palace that he isn't able to get through on his own. But until this morning, he hasn't thought all that much about what it's going to be like working with them on a social level. He's thought about how he needs to act toward them--a careful balancing act, considering that even though he's still lying to them, they're still closer to knowing who he really is than almost anyone else.

He also hasn't thought about how they're going to treat _him_.

"Hey, Flamingo, you coming or what?"

He jolts a little (curses himself because now that he's _reacting_ to the terrible codename, they're never going to let it die) and realizes that the last two Thieves have arrived while he was distracted. One of the two newcomers, Ryuji, is the one shouting at him now.

Fantastic. So now everyone knows about it.

"It's Crow, remember?" Akira says, and Akechi honestly can't tell if he's being sarcastic, or if he's genuinely reminding the rest of the group that Akechi had picked a different codename.

But either way, they're going to have to work together to get through the Palace, so Akechi puts these worries aside and joins the Phantom Thieves as they head deeper inside.

( _Flamingo,_ Akechi thinks to himself, with complete disgust)

-//-

( _Flamingo_ , Akira thinks as they head into the Palace. That's hilarious)

-//-

_June 12_

_Evening_

-//-

Their trip into Okumura's Palace doesn't last long.

Akira's honestly not sure whether Akechi had known about the biolock before they got to it, because the detective is hard to read and still visibly upset about the whole codename issue. But whether or not he'd known about it earlier, they're still stopped, before they can get very far at all, by a door that will not open for any of them.

Futaba does a scan of the area with Necronomicon, and also spends some time with her laptop and some cables trying a few relatively mundane hacking solutions, and then finally admits that there's nothing she can do to get past a scanner that's expecting Okumura himself. Akira suggests that they leave it there for the day and regroup, and so out they go. Back to the real world, heading glumly for the train and checking to make sure Akechi really _had_ gone off in another direction after saying goodbye.

"So," Akira says, when he's definitely sure that Akechi is _completely_ out of earshot. "That... didn't go all that well, did it?"

"I don't know if we learned _anything_ about what Akechi's up to," Morgana agrees glumly.

"And there's basically no way to cheat our way past that door," Futaba adds. "I tried everything I could think of, but..." She shrugs. "His cognition is that he's not going to let anyone else in, so I guess we're not getting in."

"Could we do something in the real world?" Yusuke asks. "The same way we did with Madarame and the door in the atelier?"

"Oh yeah," Ryuji says. "I mean, that's a lock that's scanning for Okumura or whatever, right? Can we do something with Haru?"

"Like _what_ , exactly?" Morgana asks. 

"Dunno," Ryuji says. "But she's related to him, and we're really doing this Palace in the first place because she asked Akira to help, so... maybe the door will open for her?"

"I _really_ don't think that we can just drag her in here and get her in front of the scanner without her noticing anything," Akira says.

"Would something _from_ Haru open the door?" Ann asks thoughtfully. "We could try taking something of hers."

Everyone turns to look at Futaba, who shrugs expressively. "I have _no_ idea," she says. "We don't even know if Haru would be close enough to get us through in the first place. It might be scanning explicitly for _him_ , and someone related to him wouldn't be good enough. And even if Haru would be able to get past the door because she's related to him, that doesn't mean that stealing something from her would be good enough."

"You can't tell?" Akira asks.

She shakes her head no.

So... that's that. They're not getting any farther into the Palace without being able to get through that one locked door, and their only possible chance of _maybe_ getting past that is Haru. Who they can't bring into the Palace for all of the obvious reasons. And if they can't get any further into the Palace, they won't be able to do anything about Haru's dad and his insistence that Haru get _married_ to help his political ambitions, _and_ they also won't be able to get any more information about what Akechi's up to.

"I guess we should have figured this was going too smoothly," he mutters.

" _This_ is smooth?" Ann asks, raising her eyebrows.

"It just lined up nicely, I mean," Akira says. "I liked the idea that we'd be able to help someone while we were trying to figure out what was going on with Akechi." He thinks for a few seconds, then says cautiously. "Does anyone think that it... _might_ not be a terrible idea to bring Haru in?"

Dead silence.

"Right," Akira says. "Yeah, I know. It definitely is terrible, I just..." He sighs. "I hate that we can't actually do anything to help her."

"There's the fiancé too though, right?" Ann asks. "Maybe we could try him and see if he has a Palace. That would be a way of helping her, even if it's different than what we were planning on doing."

"I looked him up already," Futaba says. "He's in some deep part of Mementos that we can't get down to because Mementos _also_ has a door we can't get past."

"Why is it that the arch nemesis of the Phantom Thieves seems to be _doors_?" Yusuke muses. "Madarame's Palace had a door, this one has a door, even Mementos has a door."

"It almost makes me miss Kamoshida's Palace," Akira says.

"Not me," Morgana says, with feeling, and Akira can't exactly blame him for that. He has the feeling that Morgana feels pretty much the same way about Kamoshida's Palace as he himself feels about the facility where he'd been held after his arrest.

Akira shoots an apologetic look in Morgana's direction, then shakes his head. He doesn't feel like today has gotten them any information at all. "How about we meet up in Mementos after school sometime this week?" he suggests. "Maybe we'll get lucky and we can figure out some way to get past _that_ door."

"It has been a while since we were there," Morgana says, brightening a little. "And we've all gotten a little stronger since then. You never know what we might be able to figure out!" 

Akira nods, and tries to look optimistic, even though he doesn't much like the fact that they're basically giving up on Okumura's Palace. But... what else is there to do?

The feeling that he's failing his friend sits heavy in the pit of his stomach all evening. Much later, in the middle of the night when he can't take it anymore, he pulls out his phone to text Haru.

> **Haru**
> 
> Are you okay, Haru?
> 
> I mean
> 
> Sorry, that was weird. But everything you told me about your dad, and everything
> 
> Are you okay? 

There's no answer. That's probably fair. Haru's probably the kind of person that goes to bed at a reasonable hour and then wakes up in the morning with an alarm clock and not because a cat is yelling at her that she's going to be late for school.

(...Morgana has absolutely no patience with Akira's poor sleeping habits)

He stares at his phone, half wishing she would answer and half glad that she hasn't. He already knows, deep down, that she wouldn't have talked about asking the Phantom Thieves for help if she's okay all on her own right now. He doesn't really want to see that spelled out in black and white on his phone screen.3

-//-

Haru--

(Despite what Akira thinks)

\--has always enjoyed late nights. She likes the relative privacy, when she can retreat to her bedroom and watch the city outside her window. Now, with her father acting like a stranger and the looming threat of marriage in front of her, these moments in the safety of her own room are even more valuable than ever.

So _yes_ , she is still awake, nominally working on a school assignment, her mind a million miles away as she taps a pencil against her history textbook, when her phone lights up with the notification of Akira's text messages. Haru reads them one at a time as they come in, her pencil still now in her hand as she thinks. 

He hasn't been her friend for long, but to be fair she hasn't had very many friends _generally_. He and Makoto are the closest she's had in a long time. And she's not sure how to answer his question. She isn't sure whether she should keep to the plan of using this to try and figure out if he's one of the Phantom Thieves, or if she should just tell him the truth.

No, she's not okay. She's doing less okay with every day that goes past.

In the end, she just doesn't say anything at all.

-//-

Akira eventually gives up waiting for an answer, and reaches over to plug his phone in to charge overnight.

(Haru, he figures from her silence, is not okay)

"I've been thinking," he says, settling back in bed and staring up at the ceiling. "Do you want to come to lunch with me tomorrow?"

Morgana is a solid weight next to him, in his usual sleeping position. He shifts a little now as he answers. "To the Phantom Thief hunting club?" he asks. "Or whatever it's called?"

"Yeah," Akira says. "I'm thinking... well, it's still a longshot. But maybe we _could_ get past that door if we have something with enough of Haru's DNA on it."

"You said when we were in the Palace that you didn't think that would work," Morgana says.

"I still don't," Akira says. "But I don't want to give up without even trying. I figure that maybe... I don't know. No one's going to be looking at you if you come up to lunch with me. Makoto might complain a little about the whole bringing cats to school thing, but she hasn't made too big of a deal about it so far, and..." He shrugs. "I think you'll have a better chance of not being noticed up there than I will."

"Okay," Morgana says. 

(Not okay, Akira thinks. They're doing this because everything that's going on with Haru and her dad's Palace is _not okay_ )

-//-

_June 13_

_Lunchtime_

-//-

Haru had been ready for lunch to be slightly awkward the day after Akira's late night texts. Instead, she is surprised and delighted to find that he's brought his cat up to the roof with him.

"I was almost starting to think you were joking when you said you bring your cat to school," she tells Akira, as he puts his bag down on one of the desks and lets the cat climb out. "Really, none of your teachers have ever said anything?"

"I don't think any of them have noticed," Akira says. 

"Really?" Haru looks up from playing with the cat, and meets Akira's grin with a skeptical expression. " _No one's_ noticed?" 

"I sit close to the back of the class," Akira explains. "I think the guy behind me might know he's here, but I also don't really think he cares?" Akira shrugs. "I don't know. He sleeps through class a lot of the time anyway."

"What's his name?" Haru asks.

"The guy that sits behind me in class?" Akira asks.

"No," Haru laughs. "The cat."

"Right," Akira says. "I guess I should do introductions." He gestures between the two of them, and with all the seriousness of someone introducing two friends instead of a friend and a pet, says, "Haru, this is Morgana. Morgana, this is Haru."

"Morgana?" Haru repeats. "That's an unusual name for a cat."

Akira shrugs. "I didn't pick it, he already had the name before he came home with me."

It's still a strange name, Haru thinks, for a cat. It's a French name, isn't it? Or English? But definitely not Japanese. And, she thinks, not usually a masculine name. Definitely not the kind of name that most people would give to a cat, and she wonders how Akira's cat had ended up with it.

"It's nice to meet you, Morgana," she says, with the same formality Akira had used.

Morgana tucks his tail around his paws, which is adorable, and looks over at Akira. "I should come up here at lunch more often," he says (he _says_ , actually _out loud,_ as if this is a perfectly normal thing for a cat to do). "She seems much nicer than Ryuji."

Haru's mouth drops open, and she stares. First at the cat and then at Akira, her mind momentarily completely blank. Akira gives a kind of half reaction--a smile that might have been a laugh, and an almost imperceptible shake of his head. It's the kind of reaction, Haru thinks--when she manages to start thinking again--that someone would give when they have a talking cat that other people usually can't hear.

"Akira?" Haru says, and her voice is slightly higher than usual. "Does your cat... can he talk?"

She has never seen him so unguarded, but in the surprise of this moment his face seems suddenly and completely open. _Yes_ , his expression says. Yes he does, but you shouldn't have known that.

"Where did you get a talking cat?" she demands.

"That's--" he fumbles for an answer. "How could you _hear_ him?"

"I don't know," she says. "How can you?"

"That's different," Akira says. "I know why I can understand him, but you--you definitely shouldn't be able to."

They stare at each other for another several seconds. Akira still looks absolutely floored, but she thinks she can see him starting to pull himself together, his mind visibly racing as he tries to figure out... whatever it is that makes it so impossible for her to understand his talking cat.

(Talking cat--hadn't Makoto first noticed Ann Takamaki because she was talking to Akira's cat?)

(Can _she_ understand Morgana?)

Haru makes a decision. She doesn't know if it's the right one, or if maybe it's a stupid one, but she makes it anyway and says, "Does this have anything to do with you being part of the Phantom Thieves?"

They stare at each other in silence for what feels like a long time, until finally the door to the stairs opens. Akira glances in that direction for a second before leaning forward, dropping his voice to a whisper. "Don't say anything to Makoto or anyone," he says. "Please. But if you meet me by Okumura Food Headquarters after school today, I'll..." His expression is conflicted and nervous. "I'll explain."

Morgana starts in surprise. "You're going to take her to--"

But then Makoto is through the door and Morgana stops talking abruptly. Haru's not sure if maybe he's nervous about being understood again, or if he just wants to talk to Akira in private--judging by the looks the cat keeps shooting in his direction, Haru has a feeling that's closer to the truth.

Akira slips into a friendly, casual tone as Makoto greets them, and if Haru hadn't known any better she would have believed it completely. But she knows, for a fact now, that Akira is hiding something. About his talking cat, obviously. _And_ about the Phantom Thieves, she is completely convinced after seeing his reaction. So the question now is what she's going to do about it. 

And the answer is that she's going to meet him at Okumura Foods tonight. 

She ends up waffling for most of the afternoon over whether or not to tell Makoto, and in the end... well, she doesn't know what's going to happen and she doesn't know what Akira's going to say to her, but she decides in the end that she trusts him enough to give him the benefit of the doubt. She doesn't actually think that he's going to hurt her or anything like that, so why not give him a chance?

She can always change her mind later, she tells herself. If Akira tells her anything that she doesn't like the sound of, there's nothing stopping her from telling Makoto later. And besides, he might not even still be willing to talk if both of them show up at Okumura Foods together.

At the end of the school day, she half jumps out of her seat, throwing her things haphazardly into her bag, and is out the door before most of her classmates have even started to move. 

Then she heads for the station, gets on a train, and travels to Okumura Foods to meet with, very possibly, a member of the Phantom Thieves.

-//-

_June 13_

_After School_

-//-

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Morgana asks--not for the first time--when he and Akira get to Okumura foods that afternoon.

"No," Akira says. He's _not_ sure that this is a good idea. It might even be a terrible idea, but it's too late to go back now. "But she guessed about the Phantom Thieves, and she heard you talking on the roof. That means that there's _something_ going on, and..." he hesitates. "I really don't know what it is. Haru must have been in the metaverse at some point to be able to understand you, right?"

"As far as I know," Morgana says slowly. "Could it be that fog, maybe? You know, the fog from a couple weeks ago that you said reminded you of what happened with the metaverse in your hometown?"

(For a second, something about this seems to tug at Akira's memory--something about that unexpected fog, and Haru, and...)

(And then it's gone)

"No way," Akira says, shaking his head. "If a little bit of fog could do that, everyone from Inaba would be able to understand you, and we know Dojima couldn't when he came to pick Nanako up. Haru must have actually been in the metaverse at some point."

"But when?" Morgana asks. " _How_?"

Akira would have felt a lot better if he knew the answers to either of those questions. "I don't know," he says. "That's part of the reason I want to talk to her in her dad's Palace. I think we'll learn something from her reaction when we get in there. Whether she's been there before, or anything like that."

But really, that's only a part of the reason he'd asked Haru to meet him here. A little bit of him is sort of hoping he can manage a way to get her to the door they hadn't been able to get past before. She'd guessed about the Phantom Thieves. He's going to have to tell her anything, so why not take her here, tell her whatever will help convince her not to say anything to anyone else, and at least _try_ to get her past the door? And also, he's kind of hoping that even if her dad's door _doesn't_ open for her...

Maybe if they're there, he'll be able to explain why they can't do what she'd asked them to do.

(Haru, we _tried_. And if we could have gotten to his Treasure and changed his heart, we would have)

"You talked to everyone else about it," Morgana says. "Right?"

"Well," Akira says. "Not Akechi."

"Obviously not him," Morgana agrees. "But everyone else?"

"Yeah," Akira says. "Futaba's a little upset that I asked Haru to come here without talking to everyone else first, but even she agreed that we need to figure out what's going on with Haru."

(Eventually, she had agreed. _Eventually_ )

He sighs. "And _no one's_ happy about her knowing about the Phantom Thieves, but if she's already guessed enough to flat out ask me about it at lunch today, it's probably better that I try and tell her the truth." Better than letting her draw her own conclusions. Better than letting her go to Makoto, maybe even to the principal or the police, when Akira has a chance here and now to plead his case.

"And the rest of the group isn't coming," Morgana says. "Right?"

"Yeah," Akira says. "We don't know for sure what Haru's going to do after this, but..." He shrugs, trying to cover his nerves. "At least she won't know who any of the others are, if everything goes wrong."

"Do you think it will?" Morgana asks. "Go wrong, I mean?"

Akira shakes his head. "No," he admits. "No, I mean... I get that I don't have any reason to trust Haru with a secret this big, but I do."

"I hope you're right," Morgana says. "Because here she comes."

Akira follows Morgana's gaze, and waves to Haru until she spots him and heads over. "Hello, Akira," she says. "And Morgana."

"Hello," Morgana says.

"Hey," Akira says. "So--" Suddenly, this is hard. "So, I'm sure you're wondering why I asked you to meet me here?"

"I am," Haru admits. "It seems like we could have met somewhere closer to school to talk."

"Yeah," Akira says. "But there's something I need to show you, too." He pulls out his phone, scrolling through the apps for the metanav, and then pauses as a thought hits him that he maybe should have had a few hours ago. "Uh," he says, looking back up at Haru. "Do you think you could turn your phone off first?"

"Why?" she asks.

Because so far, the metanav has installed itself on every phone that comes into a Palace or Mementos, and Akira doesn't really like the idea of Haru accidentally finding a Palace by herself, later, and getting hurt or trapped. He's not actually sure if having her turn off her phone first will stop the app from installing itself, but he also doesn't know that it _won't_ work. And he's not even going to try asking her to leave her phone behind for it to be lost or stolen.

"Do you trust me?" he asks.

She hesitates. Then nods, and slowly pulls her phone out. None of them says anything as she powers it down, but then Morgana hops down from Akira's bag and says, "Let's get going now."

"Going?" Haru asks. "Going whe--"

Akira hits _begin navigation,_ and the real world blurs out of existence around them.

"Here we go," Akira says under his breath.

"Moment of truth," Morgana agrees, and then--

And then Akira blinks, and there's Haru, standing in front of them, wearing a metaverse costume.

"Okay," he says, sort of staring. "I... was not expecting that."

Haru, meanwhile, looks even more shocked than he feels. "What's going on?" she asks. "What _is_ this place? And what are--" She looks down at herself, then back up at Akira. "What are we wearing?" Her eyes only get wider behind her mask as she notices Morgana for the first time. " _What_?"

And now here he is, suddenly in over his head all over again. "So," he says. "I... honestly thought I was going to have an explanation for you when we got here, and I can still explain--well, _most_ of it. But your clothes shouldn't have changed when we got here, just like you shouldn't have been able to understand Mona, so I'm actually a _little_ confused myself now."

"Mona...?"

"Uh--" Akira gestures to Morgana. "We use codenames while we're in places like this. His is Mona. Mine's Joker."

"Places like this?" Haru repeats. 

Akira sighs, and leads Haru over to where they can sit together and talk. She understands Morgana, she has a metaverse outfit, but from her complete shock at everything she's seeing here, she's obviously never seen anything like it before.

Time to start at the beginning.

"It's called a Palace," he tells her. "They form around distortions in people's hearts--I know, I _know_ that sounds weird, but stick with me for a second--when people start to see the world in ways that are wrong. At the heart of every Palace is a Treasure. The root of the distortion. And if you steal the Treasure, you take away the thing that's getting them all twisted up inside. You... change their heart."

"Change their heart," Haru repeats, softly.

"You've been looking for the Phantom Thieves," Akira says. "Well... you guess right at lunch today. You found us."

He's not surprised when Haru nods. The first thing she'd asked when he asked her to meet him here today had been _is this about the Phantom Thieves_.

"Makoto and I have suspected you were one of them for a while," she admits. "Because Kamoshida and Madarame both disliked you."

"Because of _that_?" Akira asks.

"Well," Haru admits. "Yes."

"We're going to have to be a lot more careful picking targets from now on," Morgana says. "If they could figure it out, so could someone else. Obviously we're going to do this one if we can, but then after that, we need to pick someone that you don't have _any_ connection to."

"Whose Palace is this, anyway?" Haru asks.

"Your dad's," Akira says. "That's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you here, actually." 

"My father's?" Haru echoes.

"You put his name on the Phan Site," Akira reminds her. "And after you talked to me about him, we came to his Palace to steal his heart."

Haru puts her head in her hands, and Akira leans over to put his own hand on her shoulder. "I know this is a lot," he says softly.

"It is," Haru says, her voice a little muffled through her fingers. "But I understand that you--you came here to help me."

"You're my friend," Akira says. "Of course I wanted to help."

Haru seems to struggle with this for a few seconds. It's hard to tell, since her face is still obscured by both her hands and the mask she should not have, but she seems to be struggling with some intense emotion. Finally, her voice a little bit ragged, she asks, "Why are you telling me any of this at all? You didn't have to, you could have... just kept lying."

Akira glances down at Morgana, and they share a long look before Akira turns back to Haru. "It's a few different things," he says. "Normally, only people who have been in places like this already can understand Mona, so I thought--well, I kind of thought you might have known about it already."

Haru shakes her head no.

"And," Akira continues. "I guess I kind of had... I don't know." A _feeling_ , one that's only gotten stronger since getting to the Palace, and seeing Haru in her metaverse outfit. 

(There's a part of him that hadn't even been surprised)

"You're a friend," he says. "And my gut's telling me that I can trust you."

Haru raises her face from her hands, and there's something like steel in her expression when she says, "Thank you. For telling me the truth, and for actually trying to help my father."

"Don't thank us for that part yet," Morgana says. "We sort of ran into a problem."

"What kind of a problem?" Haru asks. 

"There's a door with some kind of a biolock on it," Akira explains. "It's designed to open for your dad, so nothing we did could get us past it. But since you're his daughter, you might be able to get it to open up. I figured that if I was going to explain some things anyway, I might as well do it here, and see if you might be willing to give it a try?"

He stands up, and Haru does too. "Yes," she says. Just that. Just yes.

Akira nods. "Okay," he says. "Just stick close to me and Mona, okay? Things can get a little dangerous here, but we'll be able to handle it."

"Dangerous how?" Haru asks.

Akira grins.

-//-

_June 13_

_After School_

-//-

Haru does, in fact, stay close to Akira and Morgana as they venture into the strange building that apparently represents her father's distorted heart. And the first time they run into a pack of what Akira later explains are called Shadows, Haru is startled and just a little bit afraid. 

And then the second time, when she's processed the Shadows a little bit, she's able to focus on what Akira and Morgana are doing to fight the Shadows off. There's something in it that she _knows_ she's seen before, and more importantly there's something in the back of her mind that's suddenly screaming for attention.

As the other two continue their fight, Haru closes her eyes and tries to tune out the sound of the fighting around her, tries to listen to that voice.

 _Have you forgotten?_ it asks. _Have you so soon left our contract behind?_

She knows that voice, knows it with something that goes past her mind and all the way down to her heart. She remembers, as she stands there with her hands raised to her mask, that she's done this before. It's a fractured memory, something that slides away when she tries too hard to focus on it, but Haru _remembers_ standing next to a younger girl with a butterfly in her long, blonde hair, feeling a mask beneath her fingers and calling out for--

" _Milady!"_

Her shout in the present echoes the cry in her memory, and with a sensation that is both exhilarating in its novelty and comforting in its familiarity, her Persona answers the call.

It's enough to end the fight against the Shadows in front of them, and Akira stares at Haru for a couple seconds before starting to laugh. "You know what?" he says. "I give up. I have no idea what's going on."

"Why do you always seem like you're having the most fun when things go _wrong_?" Morgana complains.

"I don't like when things go wrong," Akira says. "There's lots of things that have gone wrong lately that I'm not happy about."

Haru wonders if she wants to ask what's been happening lately that has him worried, and decides that right at this second she does not. She can feel her Persona settling into a place in the back of her mind that feels like it's been waiting for that presence all along. She doesn't want to ruin this moment with talk about things going wrong.

"Anyway," Akira continues. "How does Haru getting a Persona mean that things are going _wrong_? I don't think that's a bad thing."

"Okay," Morgana allows. "Why do you always seem like you're having the most fun when things are _weird_?"

"Because normal is boring," Akira says. "And weird means there's trouble, and trouble is fun."

Haru raises her eyebrows, and looks around at their surroundings, at the clothes she and Akira are wearing, at _Morgana_. There's certainly nothing normal about this situation at all, and by the look on Akira's face she can tell that he honestly _is_ enjoying this.

Morgana shakes his head at Akira's words, then looks at Haru. "That wasn't a normal awakening," he tells her. "It almost seems like you've done this before."

"I think I might have," Haru admits. "Just then, I could hear my Persona's voice, and I had this... sort of memory? Of summoning her before."

"Can you tell us about it?" Akira asks.

"There isn't very much," Haru says, but she tells them about the little snatch of memory that she'd gotten. Both of them are interested (Akira especially seems confused but sharply interested about the girl in Haru's memory), and they spend some time going through it again and again until finally Akira shakes his head.

"I'm starting to thing you're right, Mona," he says. " _Something_ must have happened in that fog a couple weeks ago. It definitely wasn't normal, it was too much like what I've seen back home with the metaverse. And you were there, Haru, you and--" He hesitates for a second. "You _and_ Makoto, which is... something to think about later. But something happened with that fog, and for some reason we don't remember it."

"That would explain why we were so tired after," Haru says thoughtfully. "I remember that day--you panicked and ran off, and after that all I wanted to do was go home and sleep. I barely made it through class."

" _Something_ happened," Morgana agrees, and for a few seconds all three of them are silent.

Then Akira shakes his head and breaks the quiet. "Well," he says. "Whatever happened, it's over. We don't remember it, but I guess it worked out okay because you got a Persona out of it and we're all fine?"

Haru would very much like to know what had happened, if she's being honest. The little snatch of memory she'd gotten with her Persona had come with a mix of feelings that she doesn't think she could even put a name to if she'd tried. Whatever had happened in that fog, it had been intense, and she'd like to know more about it.

But it's over and gone, and there's something new in front of them. "I guess it did work out," she says. "Do you want to show me where this door is that you can't get past?"

They take her there. The door scans Haru, beeps acceptance, and opens to let them in. 

"Awesome," Akira says, as they step through it for the first time.

"It should stay open now," Morgana says. "The same way the door in Madarame's Palace stayed open once we managed to get it open the first time. I bet this one will be the same."

"Hopefully we'll be able to get all the way through to the Treasure now that we're past this," Akira says.

"Do you think it's far from here?" Haru asks.

"Probably," Akira says. "All of the other Palaces we've been through so far have been pretty big."

"Oh," Haru says. "I guess it did look large from the outside."

"We can probably head back now," Akira says. "The door's open now, and we've talked, so..."

Haru makes her decision. "I want to come back," she says. "This is my father's Palace. I want to be here and help when you steal his Treasure and change his heart."

Akira nods, smiling, as he starts leading the way back to the entrance. "You know what?" he says. "I've been _kind_ of hoping you'd say that ever since you called your Persona."

Haru smiles too now. "So that's a yes?" she says.

Akira and Morgana trade glances. Then Akira says, "We'll have to talk to the rest of the Thieves. And we may have to be a little creative about when you come in with us and when you don't, because right now actually we're kind of working with someone we don't entirely trust?"

Haru gives him a weird look. There's definitely a story there.

"It might be good to have an ace in the hole that he doesn't know about," Akira continues thoughtfully. "If he tries to sell the rest of us out, at least he won't know about you. And we might be able to use that somehow in the future, if he doesn't know about you."

"Should... I be concerned?" Haru asks. "About this person you don't trust?"

"I'll catch you up on it later," Akira says. "It's kind of a long story and we've been in here for a while already."

"But all the rest of us _are_ worried," Morgana adds. 

It has not occurred to Haru, really, to wonder who the other Phantom Thieves are. Suddenly she feels intensely curious, not just about who this person is that they don't trust, but about the Thieves as a whole.

"We should probably give you a codename," Morgana says.

"Like the two of you have," Haru says. "Are there any rules, or anything, about what it should be?"

"Not really," Akira says. "But I'd definitely pick it now, if I was you."

Morgana notices Haru's questioning look, and explains, "The last guy that joined got stuck with Flamingo."

"To be fair," Akira says. "He didn't really _join_ , he's just kind of temporarily working with us while we try and figure out what he knows about the metaverse and why he ruined the life of a friend of mine from back home. That's the guy I mentioned that we don't actually trust."

"So we're calling him Flamingo," Morgana says. "Because he doesn't like it, and we don't like him."

"I think I'll go ahead and pick mine now, if that's alright," Haru says. There are a lot of names she can think of that she wouldn't like to be saddled with, if someone else tries to pick one for her. She'd much rather come up with one on her own, and so she thinks for a few seconds, until a name suggests itself. She turns it over in her mind several times, making sure that she can imagine people using it to talk to her, and decides that she can. "Noir," she announces at last.

"Noir," Akira says. "I like it."

"I was going to suggest 'Beauty Thief,'" Morgana says.

Haru, out of the corner of her eye, catches Akira struggling not to laugh. She feels herself fighting a smile too.

"I think I'll stick with Noir," she says.

"Probably the right choice," Akira agrees.

"I guess so," Morgana sighs, with what seems like honest disappointment on his expressive face.

Haru loss the fight to keep from breaking down into mad giggling.

-//-

> **Phantom Thieves**
> 
> **Futaba:** Akira it's been like three hours are you done yeeeeeeeet?
> 
> Just getting out now
> 
> **Ryuji:** Well spill already! How'd it go?
> 
> Well
> 
> Haru has a Persona
> 
> And she asked if she can come back and finish the rest of the Palace with us
> 
> **Ann:** Wow. I don't even know what to say to that
> 
> **Yusuke:** Do you trust her?
> 
> I do
> 
> **Yusuke:** Then I vote yes
> 
> **Ryuji:** Hang on, if we let Haru in, aren't we basically telling Makoto too?
> 
> **Ann:** It sounds like Haru already knows everything anyway. If she wants to tell Makoto, she could do that now
> 
> **Ryuji:** Good point :(
> 
> **Futaba:** I say we let her in, but you should really push her to keep it quiet from Makoto
> 
> **Akira:** Or we could just recruit Makoto too
> 
> **Ryuji:** LMAO
> 
> **Ann:** Yeah right
> 
> **Yusuke:** It does seem unlikely
> 
> Well
> 
> I guess it would be a risk, since she's trying to figure out who we are to turn us in to the principal
> 
> I'll try and convince Haru

-//-

> **Haru**
> 
> Hi Haru
> 
> Hello, Akira :)
> 
> If you're still interested, welcome to the Phantom Thieves
> 
> I AM still interested!
> 
> Thank you, Akira
> 
> But we do need to talk about Makoto
> 
> I thought we would, yes. I assume you don't want me to say anything to her?
> 
> It's not just for me. If you're going to be a Phantom Thief, you're one of the people that Makoto would be trying to turn in, too
> 
> I know. But
> 
> But I really think she's been feeling differently lately. Have you noticed?
> 
> She's seemed a lot less... enthusiastic about figuring out who the Phantom Thieves are
> 
> If I agree to stay quiet with Makoto for now, will you help me try to talk her around about Phantom Thieves?
> 
> And... maybe tell her, after that? I know it sounds crazy, but I don't really think she's as against you all
> 
> Against US, as she used to be

(In his room in Leblanc's attic, Akira stares at his phone for a long time, trying to figure out the best way forward)

(In _her_ room, in a very different part of Tokyo, Haru watches her own phone and waits for his answer)

> **Haru**
> 
> Deal
> 
> I wasn't expecting that I'd actually like Makoto, the first time she came up on the roof and announced she was looking for the Phantom Thieves
> 
> But we're all friends now. And I hate lying to friends
> 
> Thank you :)
> 
> Well, we have to get through your dad's Palace, we have a rogue Flamingo to worry about, I need to rescue a missing friend from the metaverse, and my sister has a teacher at her school with some kind of fish bowl Palace that we need to somehow get a team into
> 
> Wait what
> 
> Honestly, compared to all that, getting Makoto on the side of Phantom Thieves should be easy :)
> 
> ...
> 
> I think you still have a lot to explain to me about all this

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know what, normally I'll own my questionable decisions in this fic, but in this case I'm going to call out my friend Justine for the Flamingo codename. You were supposed to talk me out of it, not encourage me to keep going xD
> 
> Also, progress is being made in Inaba! And yes, I know that _fish bowl_ is a weird theme for a Palace, but just... stick with me for a while, I have some ideas that I think will be pretty fun :)


	28. June 14 - June 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is this? A chapter on a Monday? xD
> 
> Well, it's a day off work, and also I realized that I should only have one more chapter (after this one) and then THE THING I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR SINCE I STARTED WRITING THIS FIC is going to happen, which is a pretty good motivator to write 8000 words very quickly! This is also a little shorter than usual, but it kind of felt like this scene was too good of an ending point to tack anything else on after.

_June 14_

_Morning_

-//-

Yu has spent a lot of time in the weeks since the weird fog incident as Shujin coordinating between the Investigation Team and the Shadow Operatives to try and find a time that works for everyone to meet up in Tokyo.

This is complicated first of all by the fact that he has to explain--more than once, in fact--what the plan is, and why it's so important that they find out what's going on in the Velvet Room that most of them have never even heard of before. And then once they've gotten past that hurdle, there's the fact that everyone has their own schedule, and that even under the best of circumstances it can be hard to coordinate two dozen people to all make it to the city at the same time. And then on top of _that_ , things are also complicatedby the fact that half of them can't do much inside Tokyo without attracting unwanted attention. The Shadow Operatives don't know exactly who is watching them, or why, or how closely they're being watched. But Tokyo has been a very difficult place for them to to work for a long time, apparently, and the general feeling Yu is getting from them is _better safe than sorry_. 

So they find a day where most people are available, and start making plans to get the Shadow Operatives in and out of Tokyo with as little fuss as possible. The Investigation Team, at least, should be able to get in without anyone caring, so that's easy enough, and eventually Yu feels like there's enough momentum building that he can let Akira know they have a date in mind.

> **Akira**
> 
> Are you free on the 17th after school?
> 
> Should be, why?
> 
> A whole bunch of Persona-users can be here then for your summoning Elizabeth plan
> 
> You're kidding!
> 
> I am not :)
> 
> That's awesome. That's SO awesome, Yu. Yes, I will make sure the Thieves are available on Friday
> 
> I'm assuming it's okay to tell everyone that we're meeting in Mementos?
> 
> I think it'll be the safest. We have a better chance of getting Elizabeth's attention if we're in the metaverse, and the only Palace we know about right now is Okumura's
> 
> I don't want to bring a bunch of people to somewhere that Akechi knows about
> 
> Do we know for sure that he doesn't know about Mementos?
> 
> ...
> 
> I was going to say no of course he doesn't, but if he's had his Persona for a while he probably would have found it by now
> 
> I'll see what we can do about making sure he's busy Friday

So that's that. Plans are made, Yu's job is done, and the only thing left now is to worry about what happens when the plan either works or doesn't. Yu, honestly, doesn't know whether to expect that it will. 

He knows very little about Elizabeth, apart from the fact that she's Margaret and Lavenza's sister, and that she had left the Velvet Room before he himself had even heard of it. What does that say about her, Yu wonders? He has all the respect in the world for Margaret, and he likes Lavenza just fine. But Elizabeth had left, and a part of Yu thinks that's a bad sign. It might mean that she's less reliable than other attendants of the Velvet Room. Or maybe, considering everything else that has happened there lately, it just means that she has good timing, getting out before things go bad.

There's no way to know, not until they actually give this a try.

And at least, if nothing else, Friday will be a chance to see a lot of people that he hasn't gotten to see in a while. Most of the Shadow Operatives will be here, although apparently both Aigis and Labrys are staying behind out of an abundance of caution and because of the fact that they stick out more than anyone else. On his end, Yukiko had been absolutely unable to get away from her work at the Inn, and Yosuke had picked a bad time to come down sick. But everyone else is going to be there, so even if attracting Elizabeth's attention doesn't work out, there's still that.

(He misses his friends. The circumstances here are less than great, but he _misses his friends_ )

It's easier to think about that than it is to focus on what's going to happen when Elizabeth either does or doesn't show up. Yu... doesn't really want to think about what their next plan is going to be if she's not there, because as far as he knows, there's no one else around that might know enough about the Velvet Room to figure out what had happened to Igor. And if she _does_ show up...

Well, honestly, at that point he's more than willing to leave it to Akira to take the lead there. He's actually met Elizabeth before, for one thing, and for another he's always had relations with the Velvet Room attendants that are a little bit more friendly than Yu's own.

(Alright, a lot more friendly)

(He's seen Akira and Lavenza together)

On the other hand, leaving Akira in charge of something like this is a little bit nerve wracking. Yu trusts Akira, he really, honestly does. But following Akira anywhere is a little bit like getting on a roller coaster and finding out halfway through that the tracks aren't finished yet. The younger wild card flies by the seat of his pants and _loves_ it, but Yu has a little bit harder of a time jumping into the unknown the way that Akira does. 

Yu's nervous. He can't help himself, he is _nervous_ about this plan of Akira's. 

Trust him, he reminds himself. Whatever happens next... this is Akira's game to play, and he's going to play it well. He's crazy and reckless and trouble all the way down to his bones, but that doesn't mean he's stupid. And he's not going to let the people he cares about get hurt because of one of his plans, not if he can possibly do anything to protect them.

Trust Akira, Yu tells himself, and this time he manages to put enough conviction into the thought to make himself believe it. Yes, Friday is almost certainly going to be chaos. But he trusts Akira enough to believe that at the end of all that chaos is going to be the start of getting the answers that they need. About whoever had replaced Igor, and how he had done it. About Lavenza too, if they're lucky.

(There will also, almost certainly, be _trouble_ at the end of all that chaos. But there's absolutely nothing they can do about that)

-//-

_June 17_

_After School_

-//-

On Wednesday the 15th, Akechi goes with the Phantom Thieves into Okumura's Palace. The door, he is shocked to see, is _open_. Akechi has been here before, plenty of times, and he has never been able to figure out a way to get that door open.

He doesn't know how the Thieves have managed it here. They're vague and evasive when he asks, and only tell him that they'd figured out a way to force it open before changing the subject. And... maybe it doesn't really matter, except that Akechi can't bring himself to believe that this gang of (mostly) brand new Persona-users has been able to figure out how to do what he hasn't been able to manage in months of monitoring Okumura.

Which is why, on Thursday the 16th, he starts investigating. He goes back through all the information that he has about Okumura, all the information he'd been given when he was told to start monitoring the man's Palace. And that's where he finds the information that Okumura's daughter, Haru, is a student at the same school that Akira, Ann, and Ryuji attend, and he _can't believe they'd be that stupid_ , but that lock would have opened for Okumura's daughter.

What had they done? Convinced her to come in with them? Actually brought her into the Palace?

So on Friday the 17th, two days after that trip to the Palace where they'd made actual, real progress toward Okumura's Treasure, Akechi does something he doesn't usually do, and texts Akira during the school day.

(He's been invited to a group chat with the Phantom Thieves as well, but he rarely even looks at it. Akira at least has the decency to call him Crow instead of Flamingo when they're in the Palace, so he prefers to deal directly with the one person that doesn't seem to be openly mocking him)

> **Akira Kurusu**
> 
> **Akechi:** I don't know when we were planning to go into Okumura's Palace next, but something came up for me today

Akira responds almost immediately, which tells Akechi that the Phantom Thieves's leader must not have been paying that much attention to his own class.

> **Akira Kurusu**
> 
> Something metaverse related, or...?
> 
> No, something in the real world
> 
> Just some personal business, but I wanted to let you know that I won't be available
> 
> That works out, I think we were planning to take today off and meet tomorrow anyway
> 
> Palaces have been cutting into studying, so...
> 
> Honestly we were going to hang out in the library and cram :/
> 
> I'm sorry to hear that. I should be more available after today, though
> 
> Then I'll see you soon

Good, Akechi thinks as he slips his phone into his bag. With the Thieves busy at school and studying, he'll have an opportunity to confront Haru Okumura about whatever they'd done to get into her father's Palace.

(Awesome, Akira thinks as he looks down at Akechi's message. Today is the day that they're going to meet everyone in Mementos, so if Akechi has real world business, that is absolutely _perfect_ )

Akechi leaves school early, hardly an unusual thing for him. His school is used to him being excused because of his work with the police and city prosecutors, and so no one even questions it when he leaves just before the last class of the day, and takes the train to Shujin. The trains are more crowded than he expects, so it's not _quite_ enough time to make it before the last bell there, and Akechi misses about half the student body leaving.

(Which is lucky for the Phantom Thieves, although of course they don't know it--since all of them, including Haru, _rush_ out of school and toward Mementos as soon as their last class ends, they're already gone before Akechi even gets close to Shujin)

Akechi knows what Haru Okumura looks like, he's seen pictures, but people don't always look the same in real life as they do in photographs. When he happens to spot a face he vaguely recognizes--Makoto Niijima, the younger sister of one of the prosecutors he's worked with before--he angles himself into her path and gives her a wan smile. "I'm sorry to bother you," he says. "But I was wondering if you know Haru Okumura?"

She's a third year, he sees from her uniform, and he knows already that Haru is in the same year. If he's lucky, these two might turn out to be classmates.

"She's a friend of mine," Niijima says, which is even better than the two of them being classmates. Her gaze is confused for a second, and then he sees the faint gleam of recognition as she apparently realizes who he is. Possibly from her sister, or from the news, or even from the same class trip where Akechi had run into the Phantom Thieves, if she'd been there too. He doesn't think he would have noticed her in the crowd. "Why are you looking for her?" Niijima asks.

"I have some questions for her about the Phantom Thieves," Akechi says. It happens to be true, since he strongly suspects that she'd been the reason that the Thieves had been able to get past that locked door. And it works as an excuse, since he's been on TV already talking about the Thieves, which makes it a believable explanation. 

(As long as this conversation doesn't get back to the actual Thieves, that is. Akechi doesn't know what they'd say about him going behind their backs to figure out how they'd gotten past that door, but he doubts they'd be happy)

"For Haru?" Niijima asks, sounding honestly confused. "Why?"

"I think she may have been in contact with one or more of the Phantom Thieves," Akechi says. "I really can't get into any more detail than that, but..." He trails off, and shrugs. "I'm just hoping to find her and ask a few questions."

Niijima seems definitely uncomfortable with this, though, and she takes a step closer and lowers her voice. "Look," she says. "I don't know what lead you're following, but Haru... I don't want to see her getting into any trouble. I think I know what you're talking about, and--honestly she's only been posting thing on their website and talking to people that _might_ be part of the Thieves because we're trying to figure out who they are ourselves."

This, honestly, is not what Akechi had been expecting to hear. 

"I was asked by our Principal to try and flush them out after they targeted the volleyball coach here," Niijima continues. "Haru and another one of our classmates has been helping, and after we realized we had reason to be suspicious of someone, she started talking to him about hypothetical changes of heart to see if she could see from his reactions whether he actually _is_ a Phantom Thief. That's all."

"Who were you suspicious of?" Akechi asks.

"No one that I'd want to mention right now," Niijima says, after a moment's hesitation. "Haru came back to me this week and said that she doesn't think he actually _is_ one of them. So if you're serious about this investigation, I'd rather not give you his name. He's already had enough trouble with the police before he transferred here this year."

Long practice at controlling his expression is the only reason that Akechi manages to keep his polite smile in place, rather than breaking character to burst out laughing. He wonders if Akira knows that Makoto Niijima, just some busyody classmate, had almost figured him out as one of the Phantom Thieves. 

"Why don't we go somewhere and talk?" he suggests. "If you've been investigating them yourselves, I'd appreciate hearing anything you've figured out on your own."

"I can't see why you'd be interested," Makoto says flatly. "We haven't had any luck so far."

"You never know when something that seems unimportant will turn out to be important," Akechi says, with his most practiced smile.

She still hesitates.

"We have the same goal," Akechi points out. "I'm trying to find the Thieves to help the police, and you're trying to find them for your principal. We might as well pool information and see what we can come up with."

Not that he has any intention of telling her the truth. At this point, since they all know his name and his face, any of the Phantom Thieves being discovered would actually be a bad thing for him, too. But he thinks he can be convincingly misleading, and throw her off the track while taking whatever information she has about Haru Okumura.

(And there might be something she's found out about Akira or the other Thieves that he can use at some point. You never know)

"Alright," Niijima says at last. "Do you mean right now?"

"If you have the time now," he says.

She nods.

And that is how Akechi ends up in the same diner where he'd once met with Akira, listening to her talk--vaguely, clearly assuming he won't have a name to put to her description--about the investigation into Akira. He listens to her sheepish admission that Haru had actually used some trouble at home to see if she could bait Akira into trying to change her father's heart.

It's actually a fascinating coincidence, Akechi thinks as he mentally reconstructs the timeline. He'd brought Okumura to Akira's attention within hours of when Haru had come to him to ask for help with a situation that Niijima does not explain and Akechi doesn't really care about. He wonders whether it had been his request or Haru's that convinced Akira to target this particular Palace, and suspects it had been Haru's.

Mentally, he thanks her--that had worked out well for him.

He gives Niijima a combination of half-truths and outright falsehood that he hopes will lead her away from any lingering suspicions of Akira. It seems like Haru has already done a good job of redirecting Niijima away from Akira anyway (which makes him even _more_ interested in eventually talking to her, although at this point it seems like that will have to wait for another day). But she seems reassured by Akechi's claims that he suspects the Thieves are based out of a different area of Tokyo, and they exchange phone numbers before parting ways.

"If you do happen to hear anything else about the Phantom Thieves," Akechi says. "You'll let me know?"

"I will," Makoto says.

Akechi nods. "And I'd still be interested in talking to Haru Okumura," he says, because he _does_ still want to know how the Thieves had gotten past that door. "If you don't mind passing my contact information along to her."

"I'm not sure exactly why you're interested," Niijima admits. "But if it'll help, I'll let her know you're looking to talk to her."

"That's all I can ask for," Akechi says. 

-//-

_June 17_

_After School_

-//-

"Okay," Akira says, when he and the rest of the Thieves are gathered together in Mementos. "Okay, so... I know that I haven't been the most upfront about why we needed to ditch Akechi and come out here this afternoon, but..." 

They're all just kind of staring at him, waiting for his explanation.

"But it's not because I want to keep you out of the loop," Akira says. "It's just kind of hard to explain." He takes a deep breath, wishing he didn't have to do this whole explanation. But Yu has already done a lot of the groundwork for him in setting all this up. He's explained the whole Igor problem to the Shadow Operatives, he's talked to the Investigation Team, and the absolute bare minimum that Akira can do is explain to _his own team_ what they're about to try and do.

"There's this place called the Velvet Room," Akira says. "It's... not the kind of place that everyone can get into, or even see. I can, and Yu can. And... I'm sure there are other people too, but we're the only two I know of for sure."

"Does it have something to do with the fact that you're the only two that can use more than one Persona?" Yusuke asks.

"Yeah," Akira says. "It's definitely related. There are people inside the Velvet Room that can help us with all our Persona. We can summon ones we've had before, or fuse the Persona we have into new ones."

"You... have more than one Persona?" Haru asks.

"Right," Akira says with a little wince. They hadn't done much fighting in the brief time she'd been with him and Morgana in her dad's Palace, so he hadn't needed to switch his Persona, and she hadn't seen anything but Arsene. "I can recruit and use other Persona, so I usually have about eight or ten at a time." He makes a face. "Sorry, I know this is going to be a little harder for you than for everyone else because you're still catching up--" She'd only met some of the other Thieves for the first time _today_. "But basically, yes I have a lot of Persona, and the Velvet Room is really tied into that."

"You've never mentioned this place before," Futaba says.

"No," Yusuke agrees. "I've never heard you talk about any of this."

"It's kind of a weird place," Akira says. "It's weird to talk about. And anyway, I also wasn't really allowed into the Velvet Room before this year. Yu could use it back in Inaba, but everyone was pretty clear about me not being allowed in there--"

"And that stopped you?" Yusuke asks.

Akira flashes a sheepish smile. "It's--really the kind of place you have to be invited into," he says. "So this year is the first time I've really been able to spend any time there. Uh." He takes a breath. "But there are people that live inside the Velvet Room. Some of you have heard me talk about a friend of mine from back home, Lavenza. And Yusuke, you've met her, obviously."

Yusuke nods, looking thoughtful. "I always wondered where she came from," he admits. "She was... I mean, you _could_ tell that she was different. She was from this Velvet Room?"

Akira nods. "Yeah," he says. "She was. She is." Because there's no way she's dead. "But she was what's called an attendant. There's a few of them that I've met in the Velvet Room, and they're all..." He has no idea how to describe the Velvet Room attendants in a way that will make sense to a group of people that have never met them. "Well, they're definitely not human, to start with. I don't know what they are, exactly, but--they're something else. They know a lot about the metaverse, Persona, Shadows, everything. And there's also... there's..."

His ongoing struggle to figure out where to start with explaining Igor is interrupted when he hears footsteps behind him, and when he turns he's genuinely surprised to see that Justine has left her usual post at the Velvet Room door to join their conversation at the far end of the room.

"Who's this?" Ryuji asks.

"This is Justine," Akira says. "She's one of the Velvet Room attendants I was talking about. She and her sister are my--"

"He is our guest," Justine interrupts smoothly, which is another surprise to Akira. He'd honestly been prepared to explain about the whole warden thing, and then go into the Velvet Room being a prison, and how that's a sign that there's something wrong with its master.

But he doesn't mind that Justine has just called him a guest. Like Yu had been a guest, and not a prisoner. If anything, he's more touched by that one word from Justine than he would have expected. So far, the language they've all been using between them has been the language of prison and jailors. How many times has he heard Caroline shouting _inmate_ at him?

Being a guest of the Velvet Room, instead of its prisoner, is something that feels important. He looks down at Justine, meets her gaze, and sees her little nod. She is fully aware of what she'd just said. 

"My sister and I work in the Velvet Room," Justine continues, looking not at all self-conscious about the fact that half a dozen teenagers are now watching her with interest. "We assist your leader in managing and fusing his Persona. And he recently came to us with the news that our master is an imposter."

"That's what I was working my way around to explaining," Akira says quickly, as several peoples' mouths open with questions. "Igor basically runs the room. He's--powerful. Very powerful. And I never really met him when Yu was using the Velvet Room in 2011, and Yu hasn't been allowed into the Velvet Room this year. So it took... _way_ longer than it should have for us to get around to comparing notes, and to realize that the Igor I've been dealing with in the Velvet Room isn't the same as the one he remembers. The one here, as far as I can tell, wants us to fail." He does a quick check, looking around at the faces of his team. Most are at still at least slightly confused, but generally he thinks they're keeping up with the idea that someone powerful and helpful has been replaced with someone dangerous and unfriendly.

"We need someone that knows more about the Velvet Room," Akira says. "And I know of one Velvet Room attendant that actually left a few years ago, who I'm hoping will be able to tell us more about what's happening here. She showed up at the P-1 Tournament which I know most of you already know about--Haru, again, I'm _really_ sorry that there's still so much stuff we need to catch you up on--and we're hoping to get her attention again today."

"How are you going to do that?" Ann asks.

"Last time," Akira says. "She came because she was interested in the fact that there was a whole bunch of Persona-users gathering together. So... we're going to get a whole bunch of Persona-users together."

Which is when--perfectly on cue--Yu arrives, with Chie in tow.

And after that, the floor of Mementos is subjected to a more or less constant stream of new arrivals. They come in ones and twos, new people escorted by people that already have the metanav. Akira volunteers to help with this, but Yu tells him in no uncertain terms that, between his probation and whoever's keeping an eye on the Shadow Operatives, basically _none_ of the people that are showing up are people that he should risk being seen with.

Which instead leaves him with the job of playing host in Mementos for all the new people, repeating introductions again and again (which is a little awkward, considering that most of them are older than him, and that there are still some members of the Shadow Operatives he hasn't even met) as the crowd grows.

He's never thought of the first floor of Mementos as being small before, but with this many people around, it's starting to get crowded. 

Crowded and, honestly, interesting. If Akira hadn't been so on the edge about Elizabeth, he would have been fully focused on eavesdropping on the half-dozen conversations springing up. Obviously the Investigation Team and the Shadow Operatives have already met each other, so it doesn't take long before they're talking and catching up. Yusuke has heard plenty about the Shadow Operatives too, from Akira, and seems interested in actually getting to meet them. The rest of the Phantom Thieves follow his lead after a few minutes, and soon the three teams are thoroughly mixed together.

He spots Morgana and Ryuji talking to Teddie--Akira doesn't get close enough to hear what that conversation is about, but judging by Morgana's affronted expression and some of the visible body language and gesticulation, Ryuji's compared the two of them in a way Morgana isn't happy about. Nearby, Yukari and Naoto are talking to Haru, apparently giving her some of the background on the metaverse that there just hasn't been time for so far. Across the room, the navigators, Futaba, Rise, Fuuka, and even _Nanako_ , who had gotten permission from Dojima to come up for this special occasion, are all huddled up in a group together. Futaba, for reasons Akira fully plans to ask about when they get home tonight, looks weirdly jumpy.

The groups start to mingle a little bit further as more introductions are made, and as people split up or go to talk to new people, Akira takes the chance to make sure he gets to talk to Nanako. She looks a little nervous, the youngest person there by _several_ years, so Akira heads over to hopefully help her feel a little better.

"You doing okay?" he asks, and Nanako nods.

"You mean with the whole school thing, right?" she asks.

"I meant with being out here with everyone," Akira says. "But yeah, actually, how's school?"

"Great," Nanako says. "Now that I'm in another class, things are going better. And Yu's going to come back with me after this because Dad says I can't be on the train by myself _even though_ Kanji and Teddie are going back to Inaba too--"

"He's too used to dealing with me getting in trouble all the time," Akira points out. "He probably feels like he has to overcompensate."

Nanako makes a _thanks for that_ face at him, which makes Akira laugh. "Anyway," she says without breaking a stride, as if pulling faces is just a normal part of conversation (and they've known each other for so long that between the two of them, it really _is_ ). "Yu's coming back with me, so he's going to spend the night and then come to check out Ishikawa's Palace after school tomorrow."

"I definitely want to hear about it when you see it," Akira says.

"I'm a little nervous," Nanako admits, dropping her voice. "What if it actually is underwater?"

"You won't know until you try," Akira says.

"What would you do if you were going?" Nanako asks. "I mean, obviously you'd go look, because you're you."

Akira shrugs and nods, because he definitely would. 

"But what would you do to get ready?" Nanako insists.

Akira thinks for a second. He's actually a little relieved, to have something to think about other than what they're doing here. "Well," he says. "I'd have my phone ready to navigate back to the real world right away, in case it actually _did_ turn out to be underwater. Like, app open, screen pulled up, ready to hit one button and be back on dry land. I'd also look up my phone model to see if it's water resistant because I actually have no idea if it is. And then if it _isn't,_ I'd try and put it in a waterproof bag or something before going in, just in case, because if the phone gets wrecked and water logged, there'd be no way back home."

Nanako nods attentively.

"I'd probably also leave a change of clothes near the entrance," Akira goes on. "Or at least a towel. Not so much because I'd be worried about being uncomfortable, but I'd be thinking about people noticing I'm wet for no reason." He hesitates, then adds, "I have no idea what the weather's going to be like in Inaba tomorrow, but if it's raining, that would honestly be the best."

"Because no one would notice," Nanako says.

"Yep." He nods. "Exactly."

"Thanks," Nanako says. "I... wish you were going in with us, honestly."

"Yu will make sure you're okay," Akira assures her. "And whoever else is in Inaba to check it out--Kanji and Teddie, I guess? And Yukiko's there, if she can get time off from the Inn."

"I know," Nanako says. "But--no Phantom Thieves in a Palace? That doesn't feel right."

"You'll just have to represent for us, I guess," Akira says. 

"Mmm," Naoto says, sounding not all that convinced. Then she apparently spots someone behind Akira, because she waves a hello. "Hi, Ken," she says. 

"Oh hey," Akira says, turning around to see the other teen heading over to them. He hasn't seen Ken in ages, not since the P-1 Tournament, but he's still recognizable even after four years. "I guess this is turning into a regular P-1 reunion." He and Nanako and Ken had ended up sticking together in a group with Rise and Koromaru and fighting Shadows while Yu went after something terrifying at the top that had almost killed him.

"Not exactly a reunion," Nanako points out, apparently thinking along the same lines as Akira. "Rise's over there with Futaba, and Koromaru is...?" She looks at Ken.

"Back at home," he explains. "He's getting a little too old to travel."

"But he's doing okay?" Akira asks. He still doesn't know how exactly an apparently normal shiba inu had ended up with a Persona, but he'd seen Koromaru fight Shadows just as hard as all the rest of them. He'd like to hear that Koromaru is enjoying whatever happy old age looks like for a dog, and so it's good to see Ken nod.

"He spends a lot more time sleeping these days," he says. "But we make sure he's comfortable and getting his walks and everything."

"Do you have pictures?" Nanako asks, which does not surprise Akira at all, because he's seen her lose entire Sunday afternoons watching YouTube videos of cute animal rescues. 

Ken nods. "I think I'll have to show you after we get out of here, though," he says. "It sounds like phones don't really work while we're in here, right?"

"You can look at pictures that are already on your phone," Akira explains. "It's just that you can't take any new ones, or make calls, anything like that."

Ken nods, and takes out his phone (Akira can't help checking which version of the metanav he'd picked up, and sees that it's the blue butterfly instead of the red eye--probably a good thing, to have as few people as possible with the one that had come from Fake Igor). Nanako leans over to see, and Akira... would not honestly mind seeing how Koromaru's doing. He looks too.

Ken shows them a few pictures--Koromaru does, in fact, look happy and healthy, if a little bit more gray than he had in 2012--and then lets Nanako borrow his phone to take a better look when Akira says, "Can I ask you a question, Ken?"

It's something he's been wondering about for a while, something he's been trying to figure out how to ask about (and _who_ to ask, actually) for a while. Now that they're _this_ close, he hopes, to actually getting Elizabeth to show up, there's a new urgency to finding out the answer to his question.

"Go ahead," Ken says. "What is it?"

"Was there ever anyone on your team like me and Yu?" Akira asks. "Someone that could use more than one Persona?"

There must have been, Akira's almost positive. He doesn't think whoever it is could still be with the Shadow Operatives, because he'd have heard about them by now. But the Shadow Operatives are the only other team of Persona-users Akira knows about, and Elizabeth must have been the attendant to _some_ unknown guest before she left the Velvet Room. It doesn't seem definite, but it does at least seem _likely_ , that Elizabeth had worked with some Wild Card on their team, and he wants to know that story.

"Yeah," Ken says, after a long pause. "There was someone."

"Really?" Nanako asks. "There's _more_ people like Akira and Yu?"

"Who is it?" Akira asks. Then he sees the look on Ken's face, and realizes _there was someone_ is not the same as _there is someone_ , and rephrases his question. "Who... was it?"

"His name was Minato Arisato," Ken tells him.

The name isn't one that Akira's ever heard before. Which is fair, it's not like he's spent all that much time talking to anyone from the Shadow Operatives.

"What happened to him?" Nanako asks. Her voice is a little quieter now, almost nervous, which means she's probably figured out the same thing that Akira has.

(Which is that, whoever Minato Arisato had been, what he is now, is dead)

Ken sighs. "Look," he says. "I know that most of your experience in the metaverse comes from working with the Investigation Team. And I know that all of them made it through what happened in Inaba. But when _we_ were fighting Shadows, in Iwatodai back in 2009?"

There's noise all around them, the sound of conversation getting louder as people get more comfortable with each other. But here, between the three of them, there's a heavy silence.

"We lost people," Ken says. "It can happen. It does happen. People die, or..." He hesitates. "Or they're lost in other ways. And if no one's said it to you yet, you need to at least know that you should be careful."

"Thanks," Akira says. "I'll keep that in mind."

He lets Nanako and Ken talk a little more as he thinks. What had Lavenza said to him, all those years ago during the P-1 Tournament when he first met Elizabeth?

_She... chose to leave the Velvet Room. For reasons I did not understand at the time. But I think I do now._

It's a gut feeling that makes Akira think that maybe he can guess why Elizabeth had left the Velvet Room. He remembers the way that Lavenza's voice had sounded when she talked about Elizabeth leaving. The way that she'd looked at him.

Akira would do very nearly anything to get Lavenza back safely from wherever she is. He's wondering if there's someone that Elizabeth would do very nearly anything to see again. Minato Arisato had been a Wild Card with the Shadow Operatives. He's gone now, and Elizabeth had left the Velvet Room."

"Trickster," says a quiet voice at his side, and for a second he thinks _Lavenza_ before reality crowds its way in, and he recognizes Justine's voice. He looks down at her and she gestures, back across the crowded floor to the door of the Velvet Room, where a woman in blue stands, surveying the scene with bright curiosity. Akira hasn't seen her in close to five years, but he recognizes Elizabeth immediately. No one else seems to have noticed her--maybe because of the Velvet Room, he thinks, hiding Elizabeth the same way it keeps Justine and Caroline hidden unless they step away from it--but Akira sees, and that's good enough.

"I'll be right back," he tells Nanako and Ken, and leaves with Justine before either of them can answer. Or maybe they do answer, and he just doesn't hear. He isn't--he's not exactly listening right now.

He can't believe that this actually _worked_.

"What an interesting situation I seem to have found my way into," Elizabeth calls, when she sees Akira making his way over. "I can only imagine what strange circumstances could have brought so many people together, and to a place like this."

"Hi, Elizabeth," Akira says. "We, uh--well, we're actually all here because I needed to talk to you."

"Well I'm flattered," Elizabeth says. "Tell me, Trickster. What does someone like you want with someone like me?"

"Information about the Velvet Room and Igor," Akira says immediately. "There's been--"

But then he stops, because there's suddenly an expression on Elizabeth's face of mingled shock, confusion, and pity. It's such an out of place look for Elizabeth that it surprises Akira into silence, and for a second he just watches her. Then he turns around, following her gaze to see what she's looking at, and sees that Elizabet's eyes are fixed on Justine. The tiny warden is half hiding behind him, nervous-looking in a way that makes him feel weirdly protective of her. He puts a hand on her shoulder, then looks back up at Elizabeth. "What's wrong?" he asks.

"I see why you thought to try and attract my attention, Trickster," Elizabeth tells him, her voice sounding actually serious now. "Something very bad has happened here."

"Do you know Justine?" he asks Elizabeth, as Elizabeth continues to watch her. 

"Justine," Elizabeth repeats thoughtfully. "In... a way, although not in the way that you would expect." She crouches in front of Justine, who surveys her in the cautious way that Akira imagines people meeting Elizabeth for the first time often look at her. Akira lets go of Justine's shoulder, backs up half a step to give them a _little_ space, but stays close just in case.

"Do you know me?" Elizabeth asks, her head tilted very slightly to one side as she waits curiously for the answer.

"No," Justine says. But Akira hears the way her voice wavers a little as she says it.

"You sure?" he asks her. "I mean, it's okay if you don't, but..."

"Something in me knows you," Justine tells Elizabeth, in a voice that is barely audible. "But I don't know what that something is."

Elizabeth's smile returns. "It is something that says things are not as bad as they could be," she says. If you haven't _completely_ forgotten. She stands, a little of her earlier seriousness fading from her voice as she says, "I imagine there must be more than one of you, is that right?"

"I have a twin sister," Justine tells her. "Caroline."

"Good," Elizabeth says.

"Do you know something about them?" Akira asks. "Who they are, where they came from?"

"Yes," Elizabeth says. "And I'm disappointed to see that you do not."

"What's... that supposed to mean?" Akira asks.

"You forged a bond so strong," Elizabeth says. "And so much sooner than you should have. But something as simple as splitting her in two was enough to keep you from knowing her?"

Something in Akira must have already figured it out, because his stomach churns and he suddenly wants to throw up. But it's not his brain that's put the pieces together, so for long seconds he can only stare at Elizabeth in incomprehension.

"You know who the attendant of the Velvet Room is meant to be for as long as you are a guest there," Elizabeth tells him. "That is not someone that can be easily replaced."

It clicks. 

Akira understands why he wants to puke now, and he looks down at Justine for a split second before looking back up at Elizabeth. " _No_ ," he says. "There's no way."

"It certainly should not have happened," Elizabeth says. "But I'm sure that you have seen by now how Shadows can be changed into Persona, that can be fused into new forms. How the original Persona can be summoned again."

Akira nods. 

"Not all creatures are so malleable," Elizabeth tells him. "So it would not be easy. There would be pain. But it would not be impossible."

"I had a dream," Akira says quietly. "Before I came to Tokyo, I had a dream about Lavenza, in--in a _lot_ of pain." Like she was being torn in two, he'd thought at the time. He hadn't realized back then that it could possibly be literal.

(But he should have known, shouldn't he? It's like Elizabeth had said, with the bond they have, after everything that they've been through, he should have been able to tell)

"So Fake Igor did this to her," he says. 

He doesn't mean to surprise her--he'd actually rehearsed in his mind how he was going to tell her what they'd figured out about the Igor in the Velvet Room, or whoever he really is. But it just slips out, and then he has to scramble quickly to get through the explanation of how they'd figured it all out. 

"Yes," she says at last. "I think you're right about that, yes. Anyone with enough power to do that would easily be able to split one of my sisters into pieces."

Akira nods. It's hard to imagine who else would be able to do that. Or who else would even want to try. "How," he says, in a voice that doesn't shake even though it feels like the whole world is. "Do we fix this?"

Elizabeth is quiet, apparently thinking, for several seconds. Akira watches him without breathing. "It can't be done," she says at last.

" _No_ ," Akira says. Try again, he wants to say (but doesn't _dare_ to say), because that answer isn't one he's going to accept.

"If it could be done," Elizabeth says. "Then I would do it. I would not let my sister suffer, Trickster."

Akira is already shaking his head before she finishes talking, because he absolutely will not let this answer stand. He'd been willing to fight through all of Mementos on Rise's idea that Lavenza _might_ be at the bottom. He's not going to stop fighting now, when she's _right_ _here_ and split into two. "There has to be a way," he says.

"The problem," Elizabeth says. "Is that even if there are two of them, there would not be enough of Lavenza between them to account for all of her. There is something missing. And without that missing piece, there is no way to bring them back together."

"How do you know?" Akira asks.

"If she _has_ been split into two," Elizabeth says. "You would find equal amounts of her in each half of what came from her." She eyes Justine, who looks nervous and confused. "There is less than half of here. There is a piece that is missing."

"But that missing piece has to be _somewhere_ ," Akira says. He feels the tiniest stir of hope, like butterfly wings, from somewhere deep inside him as he says the words. It's _possible_ to fix this, and all they need to do is find that missing piece. They're not actually in any worse of a situation than they had been before, when he thought that _all_ of Lavenza was missing. "Fake Igor might have it."

"Possibly," Elizabeth says. "And if there was anything to do that would help her, I would happily do it. But--" She is still looking at Justine, and Akira can see from her expression that she means this. That she wishes she could help, and she just doesn't know how. "I wouldn't know where to start searching."

Akira takes a deep breath. This is why he'd wanted to talk to the Shadow Operatives before Elizabeth got here. He hadn't thought then that he'd be using the information he'd gotten from Ken to convince Elizabeth to help him save Lavenza, he'd assumed then that he'd be trying to get her to help with stopping Fake Igor. But right in this moment he can't think of anything else but Lavenza.

"You left the Velvet Room because of Minato Arisato," he says, and watches her face as her eyes shoot upward to look at him. The gaze is sharp and intense and makes him feel like he's in way over his head. "Right? Because he died. And you... cared about him."

"Dying is a simplistic way of describing what happened to him," Elizabeth says, after a long pause.

Akira has _no_ idea what that means, but he's not going to start asking questions right now.

"But he's gone," he says. "He's gone, is the point. And if you could have done anything to stop whatever happened to him, wouldn't you have done it?"

"Do you think I've _stopped_ trying to help him?" Elizabeth asks. 

"I only just heard his name for the first time today," Akira admits, refusing to back down in the face of the sudden steel in her voice. "But I'm going to go ahead and guess that _no_ , you haven't given up trying to help him, even though he's gone, even though most people would probably say it's impossible--" He rushes through what he needs to say now, gathering conviction and trying to get it all out before Elizabeth can interrupt. " _You're_ going to help him and _I'm_ going to help Lavenza and neither of us is going to stop until we do what we need to. The difference is that..." For the first time, he hesitates. This part is hard to admit. "I don't know what I'm doing," he says at last. "I need help. You're the only one I can think of that _can_ help me, and--I also think you're the only that would understand why it's so important."

She actually smiles at this. "I think that you may be right," she says. 

(Please, please, _please_ let her decide to help)

"I have been searching for a way to save my guest for several years now," she tells. "Perhaps there is something to be learned from a guest seeking a way to save my sister."

"Does that mean you'll help?" Akira asks, in a rush of excitement. "With Lavenza, or with whatever's going on with Fake Igor?"

"I could not return to the Velvet Room after leaving it of my own free will," Elizabeth says. "Certainly not while an imposter rules over it. And there's still very little I can do for my sister while that last piece of her is still missing."

"So there's _nothing_ you can do?" Akira asks.

"Not nothing," Elizabeth says. "But not as much as I'm sure you hoped for." She considers. "If you are able to learn more about this imposter," she says. "I may be able to identify him, and guess what his motives might be." She nods. "And if you can find the last piece of Lavenza, I can help you. To make her whole again."

" _Thank_ you," Akira says.

"But in exchange," Elizabeth says. "I may someday need a favor from you, to help my guest."

"Deal," Akira says immediately.

"It may not be an easy favor," she warns him. "His situation is dire."

"That's okay," Akira says. "I'll hold up my end of the deal."

"No matter what is asked of you?" Elizabeth asks.

He nods, without hesitation, without even stopping to think about it, and her serious expression melts away.

"Well," she says with a smile. "Then we have a deal."

Akira sticks out his hand, and she takes it with an air of someone savoring a rare experience. And as she does so, he hears a voice that he hadn't really expected today.

_I am thou... thou art I..._

_Thou hast acquired a new vow..._

_It shall become the wings of rebellion that breaketh thy chains of captivity. With the birth of the Death Persona, you have obtained the winds of blessing that shall lead to freedom and new power..._

"So that's how things are going to be," Elizabeth says, and Akira has a feeling that she's aware of the new bond in a way that most people just aren't. Well, she had been in the Velvet Room for a long time, after all. That shouldn't really be a surprise.

"Guess so," he says. "I'll... see you around?"

"Oh yes," Elizabeth says. "I will make sure that you will be able to find me."

Somehow, he has a feeling that Elizabeth genuinely will not be hard to find, now that she's interested in getting involved. She's not subtle. She sticks out.

Elizabeth nods, and then--she's gone. And Akira is left with the immediate problem of all the Persona-users that have gathered in Mementos, that had come because of his stupid, crazy plan that had somehow and against all the odds _worked_. 

Now he just needs to figure out a way to explain what had happened to everyone else.

He's lucky, really, that this is the specific group of people that he'd needed to gather. Collectively, they've seen so many strange things over the years that they can take it in stride when he stands in front of them, cringing a little at the weight of their collective gazes, and explains that he's gotten as much information as he expects to today, that they're making progress toward figuring out what to do with Fake Igor. 

(The only exception, the only people that don't have that experience of world ending disasters, is _his_ team. The Phantom Thieves haven't been through anything as crazy as what the Investigation Team or Shadow Operatives have seen, and Akira half expects them to have questions. But they trust him. And they go with it, and he loves them for it)

There are a few questions, which he answers as honestly as he can, considering how much his head is spinning, and pretty much everyone seems satisfied with what he has to say. He half expects that they'd be disappointed with the _tiny_ amount of information he'd managed to get today, after all the effort it had taken to get everyone out here, but most people seem to understand that the metaverse just doesn't offer quick, easy answers.

(He keeps the revelation about Lavenza to himself for now, focusing on Fake Igor. For one thing, Lavenza is personal and Fake Igor is a problem for everyone. And for another, Justine is still nearby, watching, and he wants to talk to her and Caroline before he blurts her business out to everyone)

It takes a while for Mementos to clear out after he's done with his explanations, but eventually it does. Eventually, Akira is left alone with Yu--who of course will want to hear anything he's learned about what's going on with Igor--and the twins. Both of them, unusually enough. Justine must have gone to find her sister, at some point after Elizabeth left, because Caroline's standing with her at the Velvet Room door now.

"Are you ready to go back?" Yu asks Akira.

In one sense, he is. He's exhausted, emotionally and mentally, and he's not at all sure how he's going to be able to face the trouble he's invited into his life today. Akira kind of wants to go back to Leblanc, lie face down in bed, and sleep for about five years.

But he shakes his head. "No," he says. "I still need to talk to the twins. Caroline didn't hear anything that happened, and I don't think Justine understood all of it." Because they don't have the right context. They don't have their memories. They don't know who they are.

He'd missed it. If he hadn't had the terrible idea to try and get Elizabeth's attention, he might never have figured out what had happened, and Lavenza might have been lost forever. This _game_ , to use Fake Igor's favorite term, is dangerous. A lot more dangerous than he'd realized until he came in here today.

"What don't they understand?" Yu asks. "About Fake Igor?"

"No," Akira says. "There's--something I didn't want to talk about in front of everyone. You didn't hear anything me and Elizabeth talked about?"

Yu shakes his head no, and Akira sighs.

"Do you remember I told you about the dream I had about Lavenza?" he asks. "Before I even came to Tokyo?" This time he doesn't wait for Yu's nod before continuing. "In the dream she was screaming, like she was in pain, like... like she was being torn in two. And today I found out that she _was_."

"The twins," Yu says quietly. "They--"

"They're Lavenza," Akira says. "Broken."

_Broken._

"I'm sorry," Yu says. 

"I didn't even know something like that was possible," Akira says quietly. "It's... I mean, it's better than her being actually dead, but this is--bad. It's _terrifying_ to think that something like that can happen, Yu, and I'm just..."

He's scared.

Suddenly, he remembers what Ken had said to him just before Elizabeth showed up-- _If no one's said it to you yet, you need to at least know that you should be careful._

The stakes are high. Maybe he hasn't been thinking about that enough.

"And there's something I want to talk to you about, too," Akira says. He leans back against a wall and stares at his shoes. "I promised Elizabeth something today," he says. "And I don't know what it was, and I'm not sure if she does yet either. But it's probably going to be dangerous, and then on top of that there's Fake Igor, and I just--" He forces himself to look up at Yu, because this is a question that deserves to be asked face to face. He won't hide. "Things aren't going to get any easier after this," he says. "And I'm going to do everything I can--I'm going to _make sure_ that no one on my team gets hurt. But when it comes to me..."

"Nothing's going to happen to you, either," Yu says. "You can cheat your way out of any kind of trouble you could possibly run into. Nothing is going to happen to you."

"But _if it does_ ," Akira says. "Will you take over?"

Yu doesn't say anything.

" _Yu_ ," Akira says, more forcefully. "I'm not saying I'm going to go out and do something stupid to get myself hurt on purpose, but things happen. And there's big things going wrong here and they need to be stopped even if I can't be the one to do it. There's an imposter in the Velvet Room, Yu. If anything happens to me, I want to know that someone's going to be trying to get him out of there. That someone's going to help Nanako with the Palace in Inaba, that someone's going to... to help put Lavenza back together. And there's no one that I can ask, other than you."

Yu gives a heartfelt sigh that seems to come all the way from his soul. "Yes," he says. "If anything happens to you, I'll... I'll pick it up as best I can. But that's not going to happen, alright?"

"You'll be able to do all this better than I can, anyway," Akira says, letting his eyes drop back to the floor.

"No one can lead the Phantom Thieves better than you can," Yu says. "No one can cause trouble the way that you can, and that's what we need here. We need someone that's going to try things no one else is thinking about, and do the things he's been specifically told not to do. _That's you_."

"Heap on the pressure, why don't you," Akira says, rolling his eyes and trying not to squirm under the weight of everything Yu's saying to him.

"You can do this," Yu tells him.

Akira _hopes_ so.

"Anyway," he says. "I need to... I have to go talk to the twins. You can stick around if you want, or just head home now, or... whichever."

Yu nods, and Akira gives him a kind of half smile that means _thank you_.

Then he goes over to where the twins are, and he sits down on the floor with them, and as both of them look to him for an explanation, he takes a deep breath. "We talked about the Velvet Room attendants before," he says softly, watching their reactions, the little nod that comes from Justine and the open eyed interest from Caroline. "And we talked about Lavenza. And--there's something that... something Elizabeth was able to tell me about her today."

-//-

Yu watches from a safe distance, gives Akira space and privacy to have what looks like an intense and personal conversation. He can't hear any of the conversation from where he's standing, but it's obviously intense. At one point Caroline jumps up onto her feet and starts to argue with him, and it takes Justine and Akira working together to get her to calm down and keep listening.

But she does calm down, eventually. And the conversation ends with a hug between the three of them, and Yu thinks (although he's intentionally standing too far away to see clearly, and tell for sure) that one or all of them have started crying. He decides, at that point, to leave. He doesn't envy the position Akira's in right now, with one of his closest friends--someone that, honestly, might be _more_ than a friend--torn into two different people that don't even remember him. He doesn't envy the twins either, come to that.

He tears his eyes away from the scene in front of him, and uses the metanav to cross from Mementos back into the real world. And the first thing he sees when he gets there is the Phantom Thieves, plus Nanako, leaning against a large window on a walkway, talking amongst themselves but going suddenly _silent_ when they see Yu.

"Is Akira coming?" Nanako asks after several seconds, the first to say anything at all. "And is he okay?"

"I think he'll be out soon," Yu says. "And..." And he looks at this group of misfits and delinquents and rebels, standing up for Akira, waiting for him, definitively _on his side_. "And... yeah. He's going to be okay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In defense of my decision to give the Death arcana to Elizabeth, this is how the wiki describes characters of the Death Arcana: "In recent games, characters of the Death Arcana are associated directly with death, but a commonality that connects all Death Arcana characters is the cycles of change they experience."
> 
> I'd argue that considering the P3 focus on death and the acceptance thereof, it fits _fairly_ well for someone from that game be the Death confidant. I think it's also fair to say that she goes through some pretty major changes, especially with her decision to leave the Velvet Room, and go out on her own. And, most importantly, I don't have a lot of arcana left to work with that haven't been claimed in this series, and this was the best out of some not great options. I mean, what else was I going to pick? Sun? _Temperance?_ Nah :P
> 
> And on a completely separate note: we're now just over a month away from P5 Strikers being released in English, and I'd just like to take this opportunity to say please please please keep spoilers out of the comments of this fic :) I've been working very hard to not find out what happens in the game (not easy when I practically live on the wiki, with how much fact checking I try to do for this fic), and I know that I'm definitely going to be playing slowly because... Well, because of this fic lol.


	29. June 18 - June 25

_June 18_

_Lunchtime_

-//-

"So I had an interesting conversation after school yesterday," Makoto announces, when the gardening club is all gathered on the roof.

Haru can't quite bring herself to look at Akira in that moment. Yesterday had been her first trip into Mementos, her first meeting with the full group of Phantom Thieves, her first meeting with _two full groups_ of Persona-users from other parts of Japan, and her first time hearing the story of the Velvet Room, and realizing the full scope of what she's agreed to be a part of.

"What sort of conversation?" she asks Makoto, when she thinks she can manage a tone that doesn't imply that she's _completely_ sure that her own afternoon had been more Earth shattering.

"You know that detective that's made the news lately for trying to track down the Phantom Thieves?" Makoto asks.

"Akechi Goro," Akira says immediately.

(Then he half turns toward Haru and mouths _Flamingo_ at her, which makes Haru stifle a laugh as she nods in recognition)

(Akira looks better today than he had yesterday, she thinks. He'd looked ashen when he came out of Mementos then, and she's glad to see that he's either feeling better, or... at least pretending)

"Yes, exactly," Makoto says, and then pauses. "You were on that trip that went to the TV studio when he gave his first interview, weren't you?"

"Yep," Akira says. "We saw his interview taped live and everything. So why were you talking to him?"

"He wanted to ask some questions about Haru," Makoto says. 

"About me?" Haru asks, alarmed.

"It wasn't anything bad," Makoto is quick to assure her. "I think it had something to do with..." She bites her lip and glances over to Akira before continuing. "With your father's name being on the Phan site. I got the impression that he thinks the Thieves might actually be targeting your father next."

"Oh," Haru says, because she's honestly not sure what else would be safe to say.

"And..." Makoto is not working with the two of them on the garden plot, because she is, unfortunately, a plant killer and neither of them will let her near their vegetables anymore. But she walks over now from the desk where she's been sitting, so that she can join more comfortably in the conversation. "And Akira, there's actually something I wanted to talk to you about, after my conversation with Akechi yesterday."

"I am--" Akira pauses, obviously choosing his words carefully. "I am _fascinated_ to hear what Akechi Goro said to you about me."

"It wasn't about you specifically," Makoto says. "He was just telling me about his investigations, and about how he's pursuing some strong leads that the Phantom Thieves aren't related to Shujin at all. That Kamoshida was picked... essentially at random."

"Okay?" Akira says.

"And he made some good points," Makoto says. "Which is why I wanted to apologize for the fact that I..."

"We," Haru volunteers, because she thinks she can see where this is going.

Makoto gives her a grateful nod. "We," she agrees. "I wanted to apologize for the fact that _we_ suspected you of being part of the Phantom Thieves, Akira."

"Oh man," Akira mutters.

"I know," Makoto says. "There were some coincidences that pointed to you, but honestly, you're a friend. I'm sorry."

Haru shares a complicated look with Akira, and she does not envy him for having to figure out how to respond to this. They'd agreed that they should let Makoto know the truth, and it's _hard_ to lie to someone that's apologizing for her (entirely correct) suspicions. But at the same time, the fact that Akechi has been talking to Makoto has even Haru worried, and she suspects that Akira probably feels even more conflicted about whether it's safe to say anything right now.

"It's okay," Akira says. Then, carefully, with the air of someone sticking a tentative toe in the water to test the temperature, he asks, "But out of curiosity, couldn't I be a friend _and_ a Phantom Thief?" 

Makoto only laughs and shakes her head, and then changes the subject to next month's exams, which officially ends the Phantom Thief talk for the day.

They'll get there, eventually, but apparently today is not the day for talking Makoto around to their side.

"I can't believe Akechi came here yesterday," Akira says in an undertone at the end of the lunch hour, when they've reassured Makoto that they can handle the garden clean up, and she's gone ahead inside. "Guess we know what the business is that he had to take care of yesterday."

Haru nods. "So... this is your suspicious Flamingo?"

"Yeah," Akira says, dropping his voice a little. "And listen. I'm starting to have second thoughts about whether I did the right thing agreeing to let him into your dad's Palace while we change his heart. I'm still not sure what Akechi wants, or what he thinks he's going to do there, but I'm just--worried."

"What do you want to do?" Haru asks. "Tell him he's not welcome anymore?"

"No," Akira says. "I... don't think that's an option, he'd just realize we're suspicious of him and if he has plans, that might make him put them into action faster. No, I'm thinking that we tell him we're going back some time next week, and then _book it_ through the Palace before then."

Haru likes this idea. She knows that Akira's mentioned that it might be a good idea if Akechi doesn't know about her (the same way he doesn't know about Akira's sister Nanako, who Haru had met yesterday, and who is adorable). That means that the only metaverse trips she's going to be able to take part in are the ones Akechi doesn't know about.

"Well if you need me," she says. "I'm there."

"Let's try that, then," Akira says. "I'll let everyone else know."

-//-

Makoto had only made it three steps down the stairs before remembering that Akechi had mentioned yesterday that he'd like the chance to talk to Haru about her father's name on the Phan Site. She turns around to go back and pass along Akechi's contact information, but pauses at the door when she hears the second half of a very strange conversation.

She has absolutely no idea what to make of the snatches she hears about flamingos and palaces, so she shrugs it off, and doesn't think about it again until she gets a text from Akechi at the end of the school day.

> **Akechi Goro**
> 
> Can I ask if you were able to pass my contact information along to Haru Okumura?
> 
> Not yet

She's a little annoyed, honestly, that he's following up on this so soon. 

> **Akechi Goro**
> 
> I'm sorry, I know it must seem like I'm being needlessly impatient
> 
> I don't suppose you've heard anything else about the Phantom Thieves from her, either?
> 
> From Haru? No, nothing unusual about the Phantom Thieves
> 
> Just flamingos and palaces

She means it sarcastically, because if Akechi is going to keep asking about this when there's nothing to tell, he might as well hear exactly how much _nothing_ there is. He's looking for information on the Phantom Thieves, or for some kind of connection between them and Haru. Well, there's nothing there.

Unfortunately, Akechi doesn't seem to take this in the sarcastic sense in which it had been meant, because his reply is almost immediate, and completely serious.

> **Akechi Goro**
> 
> What exactly did she say about flamingos and palaces?
> 
> Nothing important. Just something about not trusting a flamingo and going to a palace without him
> 
> It wasn't anything important
> 
> If I do hear anything about the Phantom Thieves I will let you know, and I will also pass your contact information to Haru when I have a chance.

(Now leave me alone, she thinks)

(They're doing Okumura's Palace without me, Akechi realizes. They _told Haru Okumura_ , they used her to get into the Palace, and they want to finish it without him)

(That has possibilities, he thinks)

-//-

_June 18_

_After School_

-//-

Nanako and Yu decide that for the first trip into Ishikawa's Palace, it'll be better to just have the two of them go alone. There are other Persona-users in Inaba still, Teddie and Yukiko and Kanji, but no one knows what this fishbowl Palace is going to look like, and it might _actually_ be underwater, and it'll be easier to get everyone back out if 'everyone' is just two people.

Besides. Yu's her cousin, so if he wants to come up to meet her after school, that's not nearly as suspicious as... well, as _any_ group that includes Teddie, to be honest.

Sure enough, no one really pays attention to the two of them as Nanako meets up with Yu after class, and the two of them walk away from the school together... and then straight around and in through the back. Nanako (in a move that she thinks Akira would be proud of, if he'd been here) had found a way in at the back of the school, where no one will see them hanging out and getting ready to go into the Palace.

"You've been in a Palace before," Yu says, as Nanako slides her phone into a bag. She _had_ checked, after hearing Akira's advice, and her phone is supposed to be waterproof but only up to a certain depth. She's... really hoping that they won't be going underwater at all, but if they are, then better safe than sorry. "Right?"

"Yep," Nanako says. "I went into Madarame's Palace with the Phantom Thieves when I, um--" ran away. "Visited Tokyo."

"Good," Yu says. "That makes one of us, so we should be in pretty good shape."

"You haven't been to a Palace at _all_ yet?" Nanako asks. "Really?"

"Really," he says. "Only to Mementos."

"Oh," Nanako says. "Well... I don't think it's that different from the TV World. There's still Shadows and everything, you'll be okay." She smiles at him, although he doesn't look like he needs reassurance all that much. Of course he doesn't--it's Yu, he probably has things more under control than anyone else. 

"Well I'm looking forward to seeing my first Palace," he says. "Although... maybe not this one, specifically."

"It better not be wet," Nanako says, and casts a worried look at the bush where they'd stashed a bag full of towels, and anything they don't want to see getting full of water.

Yu nods agreement. "We won't find out until we get in there, though," he points out. "Do you have the app ready?"

"Yeah," Nanako says, but she hesitates another couple seconds before starting navigation. She... just kind of never thought she'd be doing this. Exploring the metaverse, with _Yu_? Way back in first grade, when she'd first watched Yusuke accidentally tumble through the TV in their living room and she'd been pulled into Akira's (weird) life, she'd thought that if she ever went in with anyone, it'd be him. And she _has_ been into the metaverse with Akira. The TV World, back when she was younger, and Mementos just recently. It's just that she hadn't really been in a good place to help, either of those times, so it's kind of weird that her first real trip into the metaverse to try and help someone would be with Yu and not Akira. 

But here they are, and Akira's stuck in Tokyo with his probation, and there's still someone that needs to be helped. So she's going with Yu. Nanako starts navigation on the app, and then watches with some nervousness as the world dissolves around her.

The water comes rushing in immediately, soaking Nanako all the way through, just _barely_ giving her a chance to suck in a quick, surprised breath and hold onto it before she's in over her head and drifting slowly downward through clear, clean water. She blinks a couple times, torn between surprise and disappointment that _oh no_ , they'd been right and this whole Palace is actually going to be underwater. Then she thinks to really look around, to try and take in as much of her surroundings as she can before she runs out of breath. 

The water doesn't go on forever. Not far away is a curved glass wall, and on the other side is... something that's too blurred and distorted to make out clearly. What it most looks like, though, is a wall of enormous, monstrous eyes, peering in and watching her. It's _creepy_ , sending shivers up Nanako's spine that have nothing to do with the actually fairly comfortable temperature of the water. 

She tears her eyes away from--well, from the _eyes--_ and looks down, deeper underwater. This fishbowl (there's definitely no doubt anymore about exactly what they've fallen into) is bigger than any real world bowl has a right to be. But Nanako can see several big, black fish that she thinks are probably Shadows below her, and then far below _that_ is something big and bright and colorful that she can't quite make out through the swimming school of Shadows. She _thinks_ , though, that it kind of looks like the sort of aquarium decorations people tend to put in the bottom of fishbowls. A little castle, she thinks, except actually not so little because the bowl is enormous to start with.

She doesn't dare _call_ her Persona, because she doesn't want to open her mouth and risk choking on water, but she reaches up with the hand that's not holding her phone in a bag and wraps her fingers around her mask and pulls.

 _Persona!_ she cries, and even though the word is only there in her heart and she can't say it out loud, Murasaki Shikibu comes immediately. Nanako closes her eyes and focuses as hard as possible on the information she's getting from the scan instead of what she can feel with her own five senses. She reaches as far as she can, and for as long as she can, until she thinks her lungs are going to burst. Then she jabs at her phone screen, bringing them back to the real world. She collapses onto the reassuring solidity of the grass outside her school, and sucks in as much air as she possibly can, panting and staring up at the bright blue sky overhead.

"Are you okay?" Yu asks.

 _He_ looks okay, more okay than she feels, and Nanako tells herself that this is probably just because he's a twenty one year old guy and she's an eleven year old girl. His lungs are bigger, that's all.

"I'm fine," she says and sits up, pushing wet hair away from her face, out of her eyes. "That wasn't a lot of fun, though."

Yu shakes his head, rubbing a hand through his own wet hair. "We're going to need to figure out some way of getting around in there," he says. "We're going to have a hard time fighting in that."

"At least I could still summon my Persona," Nanako says. "I wasn't sure if I could, without being able to talk."

"That is good," Yu agrees. "But communicating is still going to be hard if we can't talk to each other."

Oh yeah. Even if they don't actually need to shout for their Persona to hear them, they still need to be able to coordinate what they're doing with each other, don't they? "I do have some good news though," she says. "Kind of good?"

"I'll take kind of good," Yu says. He grabs their bag and starts pulling out towels and handing one up to her. "What did you get from your scan?"

Nanako takes it and wraps it around herself like a blanket. "I wanted to get as much from the Palace as I could before we had to go back back," she says. "And there's definitely a lot of Shadows just kind of swimming around in the water _but_ , at the bottom there's... I think it's a castle, or a ruin, or some kind of little decoration like you put in aquariums, you know?" Yu nods, so Nanako continues. "And there's even more Shadows there, but Murasaki Shikibu was picking up that there was oxygen, too. So if we can get down that far and past all the Shadows, we shouldn't have any problem breathing." She watches Yu pull off his soaked shoes and socks, and make a face at them. "I don't know how we _get_ down there, or how we fight the Shadows swimming around in the water, but I bet the Treasure's there. And it'll be easier to fight and talk when we can breathe."

"That is...." Yu considers. " _Kind of good_ feels like the right way to put it."

Nanako sighs. Kind of good just... isn't the way she'd wanted this to go. She'd _really_ wanted to get in there and find out that the fishbowl wasn't... exactly what it sounded like it was going to be. Sure, once they figure out a way to get down into the bottom, it'll be easier to fight. But she doesn't honestly think that she could swim all the way down there even if there weren't Shadows in the way that are going to have to be fought. 

But there are. There are a lot.

"Come on," Yu says, helping her up and starting to fold up both his towel and hers. "Let's get back to the house and find something dry to change into, and then..." He shrugs. "Then I guess we'll figure out what to do next."

-//-

_June 19_

_Midnight_

-//-

Over the past couple months, Futaba has been gradually working on getting her sleep schedule closer to something that might be considered normal, and less like something outright nocturnal. Her time as a shut-in before Akira came to Leblanc had gotten her in the habit of staying up working until dawn, sleeping only when she wanted to, and sometimes crashing so suddenly that Sojiro had actually called Dr. Takemi to take a look at her a couple times.

But the Phantom Thieves count on her to be there for them when they need her, and since they're all in school (except for Morgana, who goes to bed early anyway and thinks everyone else should too), that means Futaba needs to work on her sleep habits. She can't just stay up until six in the morning and sleep in all day anymore. She has other people that are counting on her. Especiallyright now, while they're trying to speed run the Palace before Akechi has a chance to do anything weird--they'd been in today all afternoon, and they're going back again tomorrow. So she needs a more normal sleep schedule.

... _Except_ for tonight. Because honestly, she's trying to fall asleep, and it's just not happening. She's lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, thoughts churning, and she just can't sleep. She wants to talk, and she has a pretty good idea that either Akira is awake, or he's about to be.

( _About to be,_ because she has no problems whatsoever waking up if he's not awake already)

Sojiro definitely _is_ asleep, so Futaba grabs what she needs and slips out of the house without any difficulty whatsoever. The streets are pretty much empty this time of night, although the distant sound of traffic never actually goes away. Futaba doesn't meet anyone as she heads for Leblanc, unlocks it with her key, and heads upstairs to the attic where Akira is, in fact, asleep.

"Hey," she says, sitting down at the foot of the bed. "Akira, wake up."

He mumbles something that sounds like _no_.

" _Yes_ ," Futaba says, more forcefully. "I need to talk to you about something."

It still takes him a while to wake up enough for a conversation, but eventually he manages it. Futaba waits until he's sitting up and has his eyes open.

(Morgana, after giving Futaba a dirty look, makes a point of walking over to Akira's pillow and curling up right in the middle)

"What's so urgent that it couldn't wait until morning?" Akira asks.

"I wanted to show you something," Futaba says, reaching for the laptop she'd brought. "You remember how I came over here the first time to plant a bug and spy on you?"

"Vividly," Akira says. "Why?"

"It's not the first time I planted bugs," Futaba tells him. "I used to do it back at our apartment before my mom died."

"Why were you spying on her?" Akira asks.

"I wasn't spying on _her_ ," Futaba says. "I was just seeing if I could get them to work." She hesitates, because all of this is hard to say out loud, and then admits, "But... yeah, sometimes I did--accidentally record some stuff Mom did, but it wasn't on purpose. I didn't even really watch any of it while she was... still alive. But after, um... after she died, sometimes I would go back to watch them. Just to see her."

Akira nods like he understands. Futaba knows that he _does_ , because he's lost his parents too, and a little of her nervous tension eases away. "So does that mean you found something your mom did when she was alive that you want to show me?" he asks.

"Yeah," Futaba says. "Because--some of those people that came to Mementos the other day? I've seen them before. And it took me a little while to remember where, because I haven't watched these in a while, but two of them came to talk to my mom about three months before she died."

(She's watched the video about a dozen times today alone. She has names, now, to put to the two faces she'd first seen years ago now. Mitsuru Kirijo and Akihiko Sanada)

"Seriously?" Akira asks. He leans forward, and Futaba turns so that she can put her computer on the bed between the two of them. "She'd just been published--it was one of the first books on cognitive psience, and the first one that really spelled out what a lot of earlier theories and research might mean in practical terms." Futaba knows that she's biased, obviously, when it comes to how important her mom's research had been. But she'd ready the book after her mom died, and she'd read a lot of what had been published before the book came out. She'd thought it was a huge leap forward when she read it the first time, and knowing what she knows now about the metaverse, it's even more impressive. Her mom had gotten _close_ , really close, to figuring out the metaverse through purely theoretical methods.

(She hasn't read anything new about cognitive psience since her mom's book, though. She would have, if there had been anything to read. It's just that... no one's still interested)

"Look," Futaba says, and pulls up the video she'd come over to show him. It's short, and not great. Kind of blurry, and there's a weird hum that makes it hard to hear the conversation. It had been her first try at setting up any kind of bug, and she's learned plenty between now and then. But it's clear enough to recognize two of the Shadow Operatives as they come to the door of what had once been the Isshiki apartment, and have a conversation with her mother. Less than half the conversation had been picked up, but there's enough to be able to tell that the conversation had centered around Futaba's mom's research. There's enough for Futaba to know that they'd clearly been trying to warn her off what she was doing.

_Stop what you're doing. If you keep going with your research, you're going to find that you're having a hard time getting anyone to publish you--to approve grants, or consult with you._

"They came to our apartment and threatened my mom," Futaba says, when the video ends with her mom kicking the two Shadow Operatives out of the apartment. "And I just wondered--how well do you really know some of these other Persona-users?"

Akira's eyes stay fixed on that last image, frozen on Futaba's laptop screen. "Not very well," he admits, and Futaba is relieved to see the way he seems to be gradually waking up, his mind visibly creaking into gear as he puts some actual thought into the question. She'd worried, in the last couple days while she tried to decide whether she should tell him what she's realized, that he might not listen. He'd met the Shadow Operatives a long time before he met her, after all. "But I _do_ trust them to do the right thing," he continues. "I mean, we were pretty much all together for a really short but really _intense_ amount of time, you know? So whatever happened here, I don't think they were trying to do anything to hurt your mom."

"They asked her to stop her research," Futaba says, unable to keep a hint of accusation out of her tone.

"Okay," Akira says. "But I mean... she was getting close to figuring out the metaverse, wasn't she?"

"Yeah," Futaba says. "Akira, she was _getting close_."

"Okay," Akira says. "Right. And what do you think would have happened if she got all the way there, and really started putting the pieces together?"

Futaba gives him a _look_.

"I don't know what your mom would have done if she figured out that the metaverse was real and everything," Akira says. "I never knew her, obviously, but I figure she was probably trustworthy, because I know you. But what if she'd published something, and someone else had gotten to it, and--"

"And..." She can see what he's getting at. She'd half thought of it herself, but there's something viscerally unpleasant about the thought of absolutely anyone trying to interfere in what her mom had poured so much time and passion into right before she died. She hadn't wanted to admit that there's any possible justification for what she'd seen in that video. "And there are people that could have done really bad things if they had access to her research and the metaverse."

"Yeah," Akira agrees. "Exactly." He looks at the screen again. "This must have been a while ago, right? Before your mom died, and before it got too hard for the Shadow Operatives to work in Tokyo. But I'm sure they'd still remember, if you wanted to talk to them about it."

Futaba hesitates. _Does_ she want to talk about this?

"I can give you Naoto's number, if you don't already have it," Akira says. "I don't have anyone else's out there, but she's working with them now, so..."

"I'll take it," Futaba decides eventually. "I don't know if I'm going to say anything, but--at least I'll have it."

"Cool," Akira says. "I'll send it to you. Now what do you think the odds are of me getting back to sleep?"

Futaba looks over at where Morgana is still sleeping on Akira's pillow. "Not great," she admits. 

-//-

_June 20_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Justine waits in her usual place in front of the Velvet Room door at the entrance to the Palace, and hopes that today will be one of the days that the Phantom Thieves come.

...

 _One_ of the Thieves, specifically.

She would have cared more about seeing Akira than the others even before what had happened in Mementos, but things have changed since then. She and Caroline know who they are supposed to be, now. One person, not two. One person, who is... 

(Lavenza)

Justine leans back against the door of the Velvet Room and closes her eyes, trying to remember what it had been like to be somebody else. She doesn't... dislike the thought, particularly. Of being whole. Of knowing the things she _should_ know, but doesn't. Or the missing pieces of her--the pieces that belong to Caroline.

She doesn't have very many memories. The earliest ones that she has are of standing silent watch in the Velvet Room until finally-- _finally_ \--Akira had come, and brought a little bit of something better into that prison. But before that? Before the endless watch?

What had it been to be somebody else? 

The sounds of footsteps and conversation alert her to the fact that the Thieves have come after all, and Justine opens her eyes to see Akira looking at her from behind his mask. There's still a strangeness between them all, herself and her sister and their guest. None of them knows how they're supposed to act, now that they all know the truth.

Akira splits away from the group and heads over to Justine, who straightens up a little as he gets close, and takes the chance to examine him. The Thieves had been here yesterday, for longer than usual, and they're back again today. "You look tired," she tells him. 

Yeah," Akira says. "Well, someone decided to steal my pillow last night and wouldn't give it back. How are you?"

He's giving her the same kind of appraising look that she'd given him. Justine wonders if she looks any different than she had the week before, or even the day before. She _feels_ different, feels like she's been changing all the time since that day in Mementos. She hasn't been able to stop thinking since then, and she feels like every whirling thought is changing who she is, little by little. The truth of who she is ( andhad been), is making her different.

"I'm fine," she tells him quietly. "And so is my sister, since I know you're going to ask. Elizabeth has been to visit us."

"She came to the Velvet Room?" Akira asks, clearly surprised.

"Just outside," Justine says. "She's been--" She can't quite hide a sudden smile, even though she tries. "She's been telling us stories about the Velvet Room, and our siblings, and... and about ourselves."

Akira nods, and Justine remembers that there's something Elizabeth had asked them to pass along to Akira. "She says to look for her at the Velvet Room door in Shinjuku," she tells him. "If you need her."

"Shinjuku," Akira repeats, raising his eyebrows slightly. "Out of all the places the Velvet Room shows up--in Shibuya, in Mementos, the Palaces--she had to pick Shinjuku."

Justine had, in fact, had slight misgivings about this decision herself. "She... seemed very interested in the area," she admits. "But I think she should be fine."

The two of them share a look in which Justine thinks that the two of them are on exactly the same page. Yes, they should probably be worried. _Yes_ , there is a lot of trouble Elizabeth can get herself into, in a place like that. 

...and then in almost the same moment, Akira laughs and Justine smiles widely. 

"I'll have to go see her in a couple days," Akira says.

"Soon," Justine says. "Please."

"As soon as we're done with the Palace," Akira says. "Promise." The laughter in his voice fades a little, and he adds, "So it sounds like you and Caroline are doing okay?"

Justine nods. "We are," she tells him. "We have both been thinking a lot, but... it's not as bad as it could be."

He nods, and gestures back toward the Palace. "I'm glad to hear that. We're going to be in here for a while, but on the way back out, I'll come back and--"

She smiles. "You don't have to keep such a close eye on us," she tells him. "My sister and I are fine. We've been fine."

He hesitates before answering, and Justine realizes (a second too late) that no, they're not, because if they had been _fine_ they wouldn't have existed at all. They would have still been someone else.

She's still having a hard time getting used to the thought.

"I don't _have_ to worry," he says. "But I want to." 

And for a moment, as he looks at her, Justine can feel a hint of _something_ on the other side of that yawning chasm of missing memory. All the things that were taken from her when she was torn from one person into two are still there with her, somewhere--she has to believe that, because she doesn't want to keep living with so much missing. And just at this moment she can almost remember--

_(A boy at her side, surrounded by yellow fog, no mask yet but it will be there soon. His eyes wide at the first discovery that there is more to the world than reality, his whole self set with determination against the idea of turning his back on this new world)_

She aches to be whole again. To remember it all.

"Then I want to see you, too," she says, before sending him on his way to rejoin his Thieves and go off to fight Shadows.

He has not been gone for very long, though, when someone else enters the Palace. She has seen him before, sometimes with the Thieves and sometimes alone. Sometimes in a red mask, and sometimes in the black one he's wearing now. She isn't completely sure what his plans are--or what the Thieves are doing in response to those plans--but she knows that they don't trust him, which is good.

(Whoever it is that sits in the Velvet Room, not her Master but his impersonator, has more than a passing interest in him)

(Another reason that Justine assumes he's inherently untrustworthy)

He creeps in now, doesn't see her where she stands hidden by the door to the Velvet Room, and disappears deeper into the Palace. Justine doesn't know exactly where he's going or why he'd come in separately from the Thieves, but it worries her. She can imagine him spying, creeping around with none of the Thieves even knowing he's there, and the idea is deeply unsettling to her.

She mentions him to Akira, when the Thieves re-emerge hours later, looking beyond exhausted at how hard and how long they'd pushed to get through the Palace. A couple of them call out to him as they head out, but Akira waves them on, and promises to catch up later. 

"Did you see that you were followed here?" Justine asks him when they're alone.

He sits this time as they talk, and Justine has no idea what he's been doing in the Palace while she just stands here and waits, but there's a tired droop to his limbs, and a layer of sweat from where he's been running and fighting. 

"No," he says. "Who followed us?"

"The one you call Flamingo," she says. "He came in not long after the rest of you, and he's still in the Palace."

Akira frowns. "I wonder if he's planning to try and get through it before we do," he says. "Although I don't know how he could, since he's one person working on his own, and a team is _always_ going to be faster than that." His gaze is slightly distant, he's obviously thinking hard. "Maybe he doesn't know we're going in without him, so he's trying to do the same thing we are? Rush through the Palace before the next time we're all supposed to meet in here together? But then if he wanted to get the Palace done without us, why even bother telling us about it in the first place?"

"He's not someone you can trust," Justine says quietly.

"I definitely know that," Akira says. "That's why we want to get this Palace done before we were supposed to meet with him. It's one thing if we're just trying to find out what he's doing, but--this is Haru's dad's Palace. And now that we know he's trying to sneak around behind our backs while we're busy sneaking around behind his..."

He groans and drops his head into his hands. For several seconds he's still, before eventually heaving a sigh and looking back up at her. "Is he still in there?" he asks.

"Yes," Justine says. "He hasn't come back this way."

"I'm so tempted to just stick around and confront him about it when he gets out here," Akira says. "But I don't know what it's going to get us if he _knows_ we're suspicious of him."

"It would probably give him more incentive to move openly against you," Justine agrees. 

"Then I guess we add sketchy Akechi to our list of later problems," Akira groans, standing up. "I'll see you tomorrow? We're pretty sure we should be able to push through to the Treasure in one more day. Then Haru can get a calling card to her dad, and we can go after it."

Justine eyes him for a moment. "Remember to take care of yourself," she tells him. "You look... tired."

"I am," Akira says. "The Shadows in here are really tough, and honestly we're just avoiding as many of them as we can. If we weren't trying to race Akechi to the Treasure, I definitely wouldn't be pushing so far. But..." He shrugs, looking distinctly unhappy. "I don't think we can afford to back off or slow down now, especially since you told me he's actually _in_ the Palace."

"You're probably right," Justine agrees. "But that doesn't mean you can't still be careful."

"I'm not too good at that," Akira mutters, which Justine has to admit seems accurate. Whatever he does, however hard he tries to take precautions, he is always going to be trouble.

-//-

_June 21_

_After School_

-//-

The Phantom Thieves accept Haru as one of them with an easy quickness that surprises her. Most of them barely know her, of had not met her at _all_ before she joined them in her father's Palace. And she can see a little bit of hesitation, during their first day, which is reasonable considering the circumstances. She's a part of their secret now, something that had happened more because of her own lucky guess than because of anything they'd decided, and maybe there's going to be some resentment that comes along with that.

Things start to ease, though, as they fight together. Haru is as ready to jump onto the front lines as anyone else, and the first time she pulls out her grenade launcher and attacks a Shadow with it, that goes a surprisingly long way toward her sudden and enthusiastic welcome into the group. The lengthy, hours-long treks into the Palace--which Haru understands is not the norm, but something they've been doing this week to try and change her father's heart before Akechi has a chance to set foot inside again--also help. This is the only thing that they're doing after school these days, to the extent that some of them have started bringing homework with them to work on while they rest up in safe rooms.

(Not _all_ of them have, because neither Futaba nor Morgana are in school, and Haru has the impression that no one is surprised to see Ryuji ignoring homework completely)

They fight Shadows, they struggle through school assignments, they talk and laugh and get to know each other. It's the happiest Haru has been in a long time, and when they finally reach the end of the grim factory and get to an area that their map calls the Transfer Line ( _but is a series of airlock passages through space_ ), Haru is truly one of the Phantom Thieves.

"So," Futaba says, as they huddle around the first of the airlocks. "There's good news and there's bad news."

"What's the good news?" Akira asks.

"The _good_ news is that humans don't die immediately in a vacuum," Futaba says. "But the bad news is that you only have about fifteen seconds before the moisture in your cells starts to evaporate, and you pass out."

"Maybe it's not like real space," Ryuji says. "This is a Palace, you know? It's not like we're actually on a space station or anything, so maybe being out in space won't actually kill us."

"I'm not so sure," Akira says reluctantly. "I told all you guys about the fishbowl Palace, right?"

Haru knows that _she's_ heard about it--that two of the Persona-users she'd met during her first, strange, trip to Mementos had gone to a Palace in Akira's hometown that is completely underwater. 

"If they can really drown in a fishbowl," Akira says. "I think that we could really suffocate in space."

"I think it depends," Morgana says thoughtfully, slipping up to the front of the group to get a better look at the airlock. "Everyone knows what water is, right? Everyone's gone swimming or been underwater, _everyone_ knows what drowning is. But there's no way Okumura's ever been to space, so what happens to us would probably have more to do with his cognition of space than actual science."

"So... what's his cognition of space?" Ann asks. 

Everyone turns to Haru, who had seen this coming. She knows her father best, and this should be a question that she can answer better than anybody else. The problem is that her father has been changing so much over the past couple years that Haru has no idea what he's really like anymore. Lately, he's been... distant and calculating. It's hard to imagine that he spends any time thinking about things like this at all. Space exploration? How could that help him advance Okumura Foods, turn a greater profit, or get the break he wants to start moving into politics? The factory they've already passed through at least makes sense. Haru can see so much of who her father is now in the assembly lines manned by robots.

This area is different. This has nothing to do with that cold automation, and as they get closer to the Treasure, a part of Haru wonders if that means they're also getting closer to his heart, closer to who he'd been before the distortion got so bad. 

And she remembers... she remembers a day when she'd been very small, maybe six or seven years old. Back then, even though her father had put long hours into his company, he'd still made a point of spending time with her as often as he could. It had just been the two of them, even back then, and that... it used to be something that brought them together instead of driving them apart.

It had been a cold day, this day in Haru's memory. Sometime in winter she thinks, and they'd spent the day inside working on the jigsaw puzzles Haru had been briefly obsessed with in early elementary school.

Her father had told her about the model kits that he used to build when he was closer to her age, and the one he'd wanted so badly but they could never afford. It had been a model of a space station, he'd told her, and even when she was that young, Haru had understood the note of wistfulness she'd heard in his voice. There'd been something about that set, about the space station, that had captivated him, that he'd _loved_.

"Noir?" Akira says, and she realizes that she's been quiet for a long time. "What do you think?"

"I think we'll be okay," Haru says quietly. "But I can go first to test it."

In the end, though, Akira's the one that goes first. He disappears through the airlock, and the rest of them watch intently as he passes through the emptiness of space and lands (apparently safely) on the other side. 

"I guess it really is okay for us to go out there," Yusuke observes, and although his tone is even, Haru catches the way the tight line of tension across his shoulders starts to ease at seeing his friend land safely. 

"Then let's not wait," Haru says, and is the first to follow Akira out of the airlock. She's braced, even after Akira's safe landing, for some form of pain as she leaves the safety of the space station. It doesn't come, though, and instead there's just cold, sudden and absolute silence, and a tightness in her chest that's really no worse than holding her breath underwater.

She looks around, and there is vast blackness and infinite stars all around her, half hidden by the bulk of the space station but awe inspiring. If Haru hadn't already been holding her breath, just in case, the sight would have stolen it away. There's been a lot of ugliness in this Palace so far, a lot of things that Haru hopes that someday she will be able to forget.

But this? Haru wants to remember this.

( _There's still something beautiful inside your distorted heart_ )

She lands, and they move on to the next airlock.

The Palace doesn't go that much longer, and soon they reach the amorphous blob that Haru is assured will solidify into a Treasure once they send the calling card.

"So what do we think?" Akira asks. "Do we send the calling card tomorrow? Or does everyone need another day?"

"I'd like to do it tomorrow," Haru says quietly. "If... everyone thinks that they'll be able to do that."

She expects some protest, from _someone_ , but not a single person objects. Haru's not sure whether that's because they're still trying to finish the Palace before Akechi can do... whatever he's trying to do (Akira has passed along his friend's warning that Akechi has apparently followed them in at least once), or if it's because of her. But whatever the reasoning is, they're going to send the calling card tomorrow, and her father's heart will be changed by the weekend.

-//-

That evening, when her father gets home from a day of meetings and who knows what else, Haru cautiously approaches him where he sits in his office. He looks tired, she thinks. 

"Did you have a good day at work?" she asks him, hovering in the doorway, testing the waters.

"It was productive," he says, and Haru is grateful that he actually turns away from his computer and pays attention to her. "And yours?"

"It's been a busy day," Haru says, and then when his expression tells her that he's actually slightly interested, she adds, "We have exams next month, and our teachers are starting to assign extra work to get us ready for them."

He nods. "And I assume you've been studying hard?"

Haru nods, although a part of her wants to ask why he cares so much, since he hasn't spoken to her about school, or her plans after graduation, in months. Not since he first decided on the plan to marry her off for political connections. "I have," she says. And then, when the conversation seems unlikely to continue, she risks pushing right into the subject that she'd wanted to bring up originally. "Can... I ask you a question?"

He nods.

"Do you remember," Haru says. "That you once told me about the model kit that you wanted to buy when you were a kid? The one that grandfather could never afford?"

He blows out a breath, looking genuinely surprised at the question. "The Galaxy model set," he says. "I haven't thought about that in a long time."

"Did you ever get it?" Haru asks.

"By the time I could have afforded it," her father says slowly. "I didn't have time for things like that. I guess it's... funny the way that things work out."

"I guess it is," Haru says quietly, thinking of his Palace, and thinking too of Yusuke in his dorm on the other side of the city, working on the calling card that she'll be delivering tomorrow. Maybe soon, things will be different. It would be nice if he found some time for hobbies again.

"Well," her father says. "I'll see you in the morning. Get some sleep, Haru. You seem tired."

She is. But when she goes to her room, even when she lies down in bed, her mind is racing too wildly for her to get any to sleep easily. She thinks instead of the Palace, of a factory full of robots running themselves to pieces on assembly lines.

(When she does finally drift off, she dreams of stars)

-//-

_June 23_

_After School_

-//-

Akechi is, if he's being completely honest, impressed at how quickly the Phantom Thieves have made their way through Okumura's Palace. The Shadows here are tough, and while Akechi has (through long practice of working alone) found ways of cutting through or past Shadows he has no business fighting, he hadn't expected the Thieves to manage something similar. There are so many of them, and some of them are so _loud_ , that Akechi had honestly assumed that any decent level of stealth would be beyond them. When he'd gone through part of the Palace with them, they'd taken an unhurried and mostly straightforward path.

Now, under Akira's surprisingly confident direction, they sweep through the Palace, mostly unseen and unheard by any of the Shadows they pass. A few times, as Akechi creeps along behind them or nearby, even Akechi manages to lose sight of them.

(He tells himself that this is only because he needs to be careful to stay a certain distance away, to make sure he's not close enough to be picked up by Necronomicon's scans)

(But honestly? He's pretty sure that they're just doing a surprisingly competent job of slipping through the Palace unseen)

Akechi's not sure what has them in such a hurry to get through the Palace all of a sudden. Based on what Makoto had accidentally told him, he thinks they might have figured out that he's not exactly on their side. Which is... well, it's a realization he would have liked to avoid the Phantom Thieves having, and he sincerely hopes that he's wrong. Maybe that's part of the reason he keeps coming back to the Palace to follow their progress, to keep an eye on what they're doing. 

They've actually _recruited_ Haru Okumura, he sees. He'd suspected that they might have brought her into the Palace to get the door open, but to have actually recruited her as one of the Phantom Thieves? It makes no sense. Sure, he can see the advantage of having numbers, now that he's had a chance to work--however briefly, and however inauthentically--alongside them. It's easier to fight, and you can cover your weaknesses through the strengths of others. To a certain extent, it does make sense to work with a group to get past tough Shadows. 

But on the other hand, what possible tactical advantage could there be to recruiting _this_ person, specifically? She'll just be emotional about her father's Palace, and how does that help? They could have used her to get through the door, sure, if they're stupid and desperate enough. Possibly recruiting her had been accidental, if she'd awoken a Persona before they got to that door? Or maybe it had been a ploy to keep her from telling the world what she'd seen here. If she has a Persona too, she can't sell them out without putting herself in danger too.

Akechi figures this is the most likely explanation, and after a couple days of following the Thieves through Okumura's Palace he turns his mind to how he can work this situation to his advantage. And eventually, he comes up with a plan that (he hopes) will turn the Thieves' attention away from him, and simultaneously let him do what he'd first hoped to do when he gave Okumura's name to Akira as a target.

He'd come here to get rid of Okumura. The man has gotten too interested in politics, and he needs to be dealt with. Akechi has access to his Shadow, now that the Phantom Thieves have opened the door, and he's going to take advantage of that. In addition, he has no doubt based on the Thieves' present behavior, that they're still planning to get to Okumura's Shadow and steal his heart.

Wouldn't it send a sharp, pointed message to the Phantom Thieves, if the man whose heart they'd come to steal meets an untimely end instead?

So he keeps his eyes and ears open, and he hears about it when Okumura gets his calling card on Wednesday the 22nd. It's a quiet delivery, meant to stay off of someone's (his?) radar. The calling cards for Kamoshida had been plastered over the school walls. Madarame's had been public and flashy. Okumura's is a single card slipped into a stack of mail, most likely by his daughter. Akechi hears about it when Okumura calls the police, and speaks to a detective he has connections to, a fellow member of Shido's conspiracy. He makes sure to head straight for the Palace after school on the 23rd, and loiters outside until he sees the Thieves go in ahead of him. Then he follows them in, keeping hidden as they rush straight of Okumura's Treasure.

It's interesting, in a way. Watching the way they take out the Shadow, fighting against a time limit that they come _very_ close to running over. And in the end, Haru Okumura talks to her father's Shadow while the rest of the group takes the Treasure.

(Akechi listens to the things she says to the Shadow. Things like _you can be better_ and _I still believe that_ _you're a good person_ , and he hates hearing it because a part of him thinks that Okumura just _might_ be capable of change)

(And it's cruelly unfair, that someone could have such a terrible father, and want to redeem them)

(...and _be able to_ redeem them)

There's not much time left now. In addition to the time limit that has been counting down since the fight with Okumura's Shadow started, the Palace has started to shake itself apart from either the Shadow's defeat or the theft of the Treasure or both. The Thieves seem to be expecting it and make a beeline back toward the Palace's exit. Akechi doesn't think he has much time to get out either, but he still lingers. He stays, long enough to make sure that the Phantom Thieves are well and truly out of sight.

And then he pulls his gun, and he shoots Okumura's Shadow in the middle of the forehead.

It's cold, it's deliberate, and Akechi lingers over it for only a few seconds before turning away. He's done worse things, in the service of Shido and his conspiracy. He will probably cross more lines after this one, go further than this act, before he finally has the chance to get his revenge. This is just another step along a path that he's already decided to walk down.

(But there's still a second--there's _always_ a second--where he wonders if he's gone too far)

(He'll never get what he wants if he gives up and turns around)

The Palace is crumbling around him. Akechi turns and flees.

-//-

_June 23_

_After School_

-//-

The day after they finish Okumura's Palace, Akira meets with Yusuke in Shibuya.

The rest of the Thieves have all split up to do different things. Futaba's at home going back over some of her mom's research and (Akira's pretty sure) deciding whether to ask the Shadow Operatives about their old interest in cognitive psience. Ann has a modeling gig, Ryuji is scheming something with Yuuki Mishima (the guy that runs the Phan Site) to call up a maid service that Akira... had not asked any questions about, and Haru is at home keeping an anxious eye for changes in her dad.

Apparently he's been sick in bed since yesterday, refusing to talk to anyone, even Haru. Akira... isn't really sure if that's normal? Kamoshida had basically confessed right away, but Madarame had taken a few more days. Since Yusuke had already moved out of the atelier by that point, no one has any idea how he'd spent the days between having his heart stolen and giving his press conference confession.

But that's part of what today's trip is about, honestly. Madarame has tried, more than once, to get back in touch with Yusuke since his arrest. Yusuke so far hasn't responded at all, but when the Phantom Thieves group text turned this morning to whether Haru's dad's condition is normal, he'd suggested going back to Madarame.

Akira, of course, had volunteered to come with him. It's not that he wants to see Madarame that badly, it's just that he's not going to let Yusuke go through something like this on his own. So here they are. Standing outside the rundown building where Yusuke had grown up. Madarame had been arrested, but after paying bail--from funds, Akira is sure, that had come from selling Sayuri fakes--he'd come back here until the start of his trial.

"Did you tell him we were coming?" Akira asks, as they stand on the sidewalk.

"I did," Yusuke says. "I told him that you were coming with me to pick up some of my things, and that... if he wants to talk, this will be the last chance I'm planning to give him."

"What did he say?" Akira asks.

"Not very much," Yusuke admits. "I don't know if he's happy that you're coming too."

"No big surprise there," Akira says. "He had a change of heart, not a change of... I don't know, his past." And whatever else might or might not have happened to Madarame after his Treasure was stolen, there's still five years of bad history between them. 

"He didn't argue, though," Yusuke says. "He didn't even ask me not to bring you. That's--different."

They go back to watching the building. Akira is absolutely not looking forward to whatever this conversation is going to turn out to be. And Yusuke, he's pretty sure, is dreading the upcoming conversation with the man that had done so much to hurt him, his mother, and both of their art. 

(For most people, that last part wouldn't have mattered much, compared to the first two. For Yusuke, Akira knows, it's possibly the most important betrayal out of all three)

"So I guess we should knock," Akira says eventually.

"We probably should," Yusuke agrees, and moves reluctantly forward to do exactly that.

There's a little bit more of a delay until Madarame comes to answer the door, and then a _long_ pause as the three of them just sort of look at each other. Then Yusuke clears his throat and asks, "Is it alright if we come in?"

"I suppose you did say that you were bringing him," Madarame says, and moves aside so that both of them can come inside. "I was hoping to talk to you alone, Yusuke my boy."

"I can head back and start packing stuff up," Akira says to Yusuke. "Unless you want me to stick around."

He's planning to listen, of course, and he's sure that Yusuke knows that, but there's a better chance of Madarame telling them what they want to know if Yusuke talks to him alone.

"If you don't mind starting without me," Yusuke says. "I'll... come back and join you soon."

"Take your time," Akira says, and heads for Yusuke's old room while the other two stay in the hall to talk.

The rest of the building is quiet, and Akira can still hear the conversation outside even when he's in Yusuke's room, trying to figure out what Yusuke would actually _want_ him to grab. The packing had been more of an excuse than anything else, but on the other hand it's not going to hurt for Yusuke to walk away from this with some more of his things. He starts opening drawers and grabbing things, listening so hard as he does so that his ears almost hurt.

The conversation starts out stiff and awkward, and with the most ordinary subjects that are probably possible under the circumstances. They talk about Yusuke's living situation in the school dorms, and about Madarame's upcoming trial date. Yusuke admits that a prosecutor has been in touch with him about testifying, which is something that he hasn't even told Akira yet. 

"Are you going to testify?" Madarame asks.

There's a long pause. Akira has mostly stopped even pretending to pack Yusuke's things, and is instead crouched on the floor near a pile of stuff, listening hard.

"I haven't decided yet," Yusuke says. "There are--apparently the prosecutor's office has a strong case without my testimony, so they would be using me as a witness to, uh--to try and go for a harsher sentence than they think they can get otherwise."

Akira wonders why Yusuke's testimony, specifically, would be enough to earn Madarame a harsher sentence. Maybe it's because Yusuke is the only pupil he's ever raised from early childhood. Most of the others, the ones that had been driven out like Nakanohara, will be able to testify that Madarame was a plagarist who stole their work and ruined their artistic careers. Yusuke will be able to testify to what an entire childhood with Madarame had been like.

"I suppose it's ultimately up to you," Madarame says, and although his voice sounds strained, he doesn't do anything to try and talk Yusuke out of it. 

"It is," Yusuke agrees. "And one of the things I've been wondering about while I try to make up my mind is... the change of heart from the Phantom Thieves. How... what exactly is that? What _changed_?"

Madarame sighs, and says, "It was--like waking up. I hope that you never have to go through something like this yourself, but it is so... _easy_ , to find yourself making one bad decision after another, until your life is just too distorted to let you see things clearly."

"Distorted is a good word for it," Yusuke muses. 

"I don't know what exactly caused it," Madarame says. "Or whether it was the Phantom Thieves, or something else. I suppose there's a part of me that thinks it might have been. But I had--well, you'll think it's... superstitious, maybe."

"What is?" Yusuke asks.

"I had some dreams in the days after I received the calling card," Madarame says. "Nothing that I remember clearly. Something about a museum, which I suppose makes sense because of how much I was thinking about the _Sayuri_."

Akira stands, as if this is going to help him to listen more easily through the wall. It sounds like some part of Madarame's subconscious does know what had happened in the Palace when they fought his Shadow, even if he doesn't have most of the details. That's good to know moving forward--it definitely sounds like Morgana had been right to suggest using codenames, at least. Akira would have hated if any of their names had filtered through to Madarame in his dreams after they stold his Treasure.

"That must have been it," Yusuke agrees. "So after that, what... what did you do? The calling card was sent several days before your press conference, wasn't it? So--"

"I don't remember much of what I did," Madarame tells him. "I think I just wandered around here. I had a lot to think about."

"Did you get sick?" Yusuke asks, and Akira winces a little. They're here to find out if what's happening to Haru's dad is normal after a change of heart, but the question is maybe just a little bit too on the nose. "Or stay in bed for a long time?"

"Why would I have been sick or in bed?" Madarame asks.

There's a brief pause.

"...no reason," Yusuke says. "But _were_ you?"

"No," Madarame says. "I was not."

Well that doesn't bode well for Haru's dad, if what's happening to him now isn't a normal part of the process. Akira's not particularly surprised when he hears Yusuke bring the conversation to a close not too long after that. 

(He _is_ surprised at the way that Yusuke does it--that he tells Madarame that he'll be at his trial, either to testify or to watch)

(Akira wouldn't have gone. But Madarame had raised Yusuke, and Akira's sure that there are parts of their relationship that he doesn't know anything about. And if Yusuke isn't ready to give up on him completely, then that just speaks to how strong _Yusuke_ is)

They pack the rest of Yusuke's things quickly, and when they're back out on the street, Yusuke says grimly, "Madarame wasn't bedridden after we changed his heart."

"No," Akira says quietly. 

"But Okumura is."

Akira takes a deep breath. "He is," he agrees. "So something's wrong."

His phone buzzes with a new message, and he pulls his out at the same time that Yusuke reaches for his own. Both of them look down at the new message in the Phantom Thief group chat.

> **Phantom Thieves**
> 
> **Haru:** He's doing a lot better!
> 
> **Ryuji:** For real? That's awesome!
> 
> **Haru:** He's out of bed and talking. He seems... sad, I think? But at least he's talking again
> 
> So glad to hear that, Haru. We just finished talking to Madarame and it doesn't sound like he went through anything like that
> 
> **Futaba:** Maybe it just affects different people in different ways
> 
> I bet that's it
> 
> **Haru:** He's also said that he wants to hold a press conference tomorrow afternoon
> 
> **Ann:** Like Madarame's?
> 
> **Haru:** I suppose so!
> 
> **Ann:** We should all watch it together again
> 
> **Ryuji:** I'm up for that
> 
> **Futaba:** It can't be at Leblanc again though
> 
> **Yusuke:** Why not?
> 
> Pretty sure Sojiro's going to start getting suspicious if ANOTHER friend's parent holds a press conference confessing to horrible crimes
> 
> **Haru:** He's having the press conference at Okumura Foods headquarters tomorrow, so everyone can come back home with me
> 
> **Haru:** There won't be anyone else there while he's out
> 
> That would be great, Haru, thanks
> 
> **Haru:** My pleasure :)

"It looks like his press conference is picking up some interest online," Yusuke says, and Akira looks over to see that Yusuke has already looked it up. "But he did apparently announce that it has something to do with the Phantom Thieves."

"And we _did_ just change Madarame's heart," Akira says. "I guess people would be interested."

"Apparently so," Yusuke agrees.

"We're starting to get a little bit famous," Akira says, grinning as he slips his phone back into his pocket. "And we beat the Palace before Akechi could do whatever he was planning to do, and Haru's dad is going to be okay after all. I think things are actually going to turn out pretty okay."

-//-

_June 24_

_After School_

-//-

Haru's first experience in bringing friends home with her starts out very well. She likes the Phantom Thieves, and it's a nice change to be able to spend time with them in the real world for once. The mood is light and relieved, and Haru's sure that she's not the only one happy to know that her father isn't suffering any of the long term effects they'd worried about yesterday when he wouldn't get out of bed at first yesterday.

It's nice to meet people that really and genuinely care what happens to her father. Since none of them know her except through his Palace--an admittedly not very flattering first impression--Haru is pretty sure that they only care about him because they care about her. And that, Haru has to admit, feels pretty nice.

Her final year of high school isn't turning out at all the way she'd thought it would. She'd been surprised and happy to be able to recruit Akira into the gardening club with her, and then even happier when Makoto started to join them--right now, yes, there's a little bit of distance because of the secrets Haru is keeping, but now that the Palace is over, she really thinks that they'll be able to make progress toward convincing Makoto to give up on hunting the Thieves. Haru really hopes so, because... because finding the Phantom Thieves, being accepted as one of them, has already given her so much _more_ than she'd ever expected to have.

And now they've saved her father.

Haru feels like she's floating on air, and she doesn't come down at all until it's time for the press conference to start. Haru gets the TV turned on and set to the right channel, and then everyone gathers around to see what exactly he's going to say. The mood grows serious. They're all together in the real world, but this is still Phantom Thief business. 

"Come on, Dad," Haru says quietly, clasping her hands together. "It's almost over."

"It's going to be fine," Morgana assures her. "You'll see."

"I know," Haru says. "But I just need to see it."

"Shh!" Ryuji says. "It's starting."

And it is. Haru has seen her father on TV before, occasionally. He's made the news once or twice because of his business, and a few time because of other connections, and especially recently because of his early attempts to break into politics. But Haru has never watched any conference her father gave with the sharp interest that she gives this one today.

It starts out with an apology, which Haru approves of. He's done something wrong, and so an apology is a good start. Then he starts to talk about the things he's done at his company, the ways he's used his employees for his own profit, and how he'd hurt his competitors in his violent desperation to get to the top.

"But it wasn't just me," he says. "There were others--"

And that's when Haru realizes that there's something wrong.

She should have seen it already, maybe. She should have noticed that he sounded almost feverish in his confession. She should have noticed the bloodshot quality to his eyes, she should have--she should have realized that something's going wrong _before_ he stands, and starts to cough up blood.

There's noise all around her, protests from the other Phantom Thieves, but Haru can't hear anything but her heartbeat pounding in her ears. She's staring at her father's face, at the horrible sight of his face pointed upward, like a drowning man gasping for air. At the blood pooling in his mouth, dripping down his cheeks from his eye sockets, at the sight of her father dying horribly on the TV screen in front of her.

And then he collapses, so still that there is no doubt whatsoever in what's just happened, and sound comes rushing back into Haru's world. She lets out a strangled almost-scream and takes one step toward the TV. "No," she says. " _No--_ "

-//-

(Akira sees the look on her face, and recognizes it exactly. He knows what it feels like to find out like this, to see on TV, that you've suddenly been orphaned)

(Only this is worse, because he hadn't had to watch his parents actually die, and because--)

(Because Haru's father's death is their fault)

-//-

She shakes her head, like she can chase off the reality of what's just happened. This isn't because of them, is it? Kamoshida and Madarame had both survived their changes of heart, it _can't_ have been anything they did--she can't let herself believe that she's killed her own father. 

It can't be because of them. This is... it's something else. It has to be something else, _it has to be something else_.

"I need to go," Haru says, her own voice sounding choked and uneven. "I'm so sorry--"

"Haru," Ann says. " _Please_ don't be sorry." There's pain on her face, a horror that is completely natural after what they've just seen. Haru can hear a high pitched, constant tone from the TV, which means that even the network has decided that this is too much for their viewers to have to see, and that they've cut the feed from the press conference.

"I just... I need to get down there. Or I need to--do something. I don't know." She gives them a small she does not feel, something that's all instinct after a lifetime of training in good manners. From the looks of the rest of the Phantom Thieves, none of them is buying her attempt.

She doesn't blame them, but she doesn't let any of them talk her out of leaving as quickly as she physically can. She doesn't even know what the rest of them are doing, if they're still there or if they're leaving too, but she doesn't care right now. There will be someone at Okumura Foods that knows her, and will tell her what happened. That's the only place she can think of to go and so she makes a beeline straight there, taking the same train she's used so often in the past week after long trips through her father's Palace.

 _(Dad,_ she thinks, as she stands ramrod stiff on the train, wishing the train would go faster. _Dad, you were wrong but you were ready to change. You were wrong but I_ loved _you, and there were stars in your heart)_

There's an ambulance on the street outside Okumura Foods when Haru finally gets there. And she knows what that means. She'd had to take the train here, she'd had to wait at a station, wait through the interminable trip to headquarters, had to walk the rest of the way there. If there had been any chance at saving him, if it hadn't been too late and he'd still been alive, the ambulance would be long gone.

She's crying even before she finds someone she knows, one of the older board members, someone who knows her and tells her that yes, Kunikazu Okumura is dead.

-//-

_June 24_

_Midnight_

-//-

Akira almost hadn't expected to sleep at all, after what they'd seen at Okumura's press conference. He and the rest of the Thieves had hung around for a while, not sure if Haru was coming back, not sure if there was anything they could possibly do for her, but eventually it had gotten late. They'd split up and gone their separate ways.

Futaba had cried on the train back to Yongen-Jaya. They'd gotten two seats next to each other, for once, and Futaba had curled up on her seat with her head pressed against Akira's shoulder, Morgana doing his best to be comforting on her lap, and she'd cried as they rode back. Akira doesn't blame her--he'd felt like crying too. He and Futaba have both lost parents, suddenly and violently and in ways that had upended their lives completely. Watching the same thing happen to a friend _hurts_ in a way that's almost physical.

And what's worse is the realization that comes just as the three of them had turned onto Leblanc's street.

Akechi. It must have been Akechi, and Akira had known he was there, known he was up to no good, but he'd been unbelievably, jaw-droppingly _stupid_ and hadn't done anything about it. This Palace had been Akechi's idea. Akechi must have done something to the Shadow or in the Palace that had translated into not just a change of heart, but a death.

Akira doesn't share this with anyone. He zombies his way through dinner with Futaba and Sojiro, then goes up to bed early with Akechi's betrayal sitting heavy on his heart. It's still there, like a chain around his soul, when he opens his eyes to see the familiar walls of the Velvet Room.

Yeah, sure. Because he _definitely_ has the emotional bandwidth to deal with being here right now. He sits up anyway, then forces himself into a standing position, hands wrapped around the bars of his cell so tightly that it hurts. He stares through the gap in the bars at the man sitting--smiling, cocky, almost unbearable--in the middle of the room.

"It seems that you have made progress toward your rehabilitation," Fake Igor says, in a tone so smooth it's almost slimy. "Or perhaps... a step _away_ from it?"

"If you have something to say," Akira tells him. "Then come out and just _say_ it."

Caroline, who has been standing with her back to him, fidgeting slightly with the baton in her hands, shoots him a look that Akira ignores.

"It seems that you have made a miscalculation," Fake Igor says, and his eyes are so bright that Akira knows that he's enjoying this. "I have warned you in the past of the importance of this game. And yet it seems that you still refuse to take it seriously." The toe of one shoe taps against the floor, and his smile stretches more widely across his face. "Or did you truly believe that you were the only player in this ga--"

"Shut up."

The words lash out at Fake Igor, quick and biting, and for a second Akira is rewarded with an expression of genuine anger. Good--

(Bad)

\--he's hurt and angry and grieving and guilty. He'd been stupid and he'd messed up and now his friend's father is dead. And maybe, if he'd confronted Akechi sooner about the fact that he's _blatantly_ up to no good, things never would have gone as badly wrong as they did.

He's not going to make the same mistake twice. Fake Igor wants to sit here and pretend to be someone that wants to help him? No. Akira's not in the mood to let that stand.

"How disappointing," Fake Igor says, after he's had the second or two that it takes him to collect himself, and mold his features back into that smile. "I would not have expected to see you as such a sore loser."

"I haven't lost," Akira says. "I screwed up, I underestimated someone, and I got someone killed, but that doesn't mean I'm giving up. And I'm not a sore loser because I haven't _lost_." He looks Fake Igor straight in the eye, and refuses to be cowed by the very real anger there. "Do you understand what I'm saying to you? This isn't a game, no matter what you keep saying. It's a fight with peoples' lives on the line."

"Trickster," Justine whispers. "Don't--"

"I have a feeling Igor would have understood," Akira says, not even blinking as he continues to stare Fake Igor down. 

For a second time, there's silence in the Velvet Room. And then the man--or whatever he is--leans forward. "So you've guessed that much at least," he says.

"I _know_ that much," Akira corrects. "I don't know who you are or what you want, but I know that you're not who you say that you are. I know some of what you've done, and I know that makes you my enemy."

He's saying things here that he can't back away from, and Akira knows that. He's fully aware of what he's doing, even if there's no possible way he could know the full extent of the consequences that he's going to face after this confrontation. It doesn't matter. He's going down this path because he is a Trickster and so there are lies he will tell and secrets he will keep, but he _cannot_ at this moment treat one more enemy as an ally.

"So that is your decision," Fake Igor says. "You are choosing to walk away from your rehabilitation."

"I don't need to be rehabilitated," Akira tells him. "So if that's how you want to put it, _yes_. I'm rejecting whatever the rehabilitation is that you're offering me. I want nothing to do with it."

Igor waves one hand in an almost lazy gesture. A _well what do you know_ movement, one that dismisses Akira as unimportant and barely even worth his time. "Then there's only one path forward from here," he says, and turns his attention to the twins. "You know your role as wardens," he tells them. "Dispose of him."

Akira doesn't even flinch, because he knows that there is no way that he's in danger from the twins. 

Sure enough, Justine is already shaking her head. "No," she says. "That is not something that we will do."

"Right," Caroline agrees. "If he rejects his rehabilitation, then we reject our role as his wardens." She turns, looking up at Akira with an expression that has so much of Lavenza in it that he can't understand how he never saw it before. "Our role isn't to be your wardens," she tells him. "It should never have been anything other than attendants to our guest."

"No," Akira says. "It's to be friends."

She smiles at him, tight and fierce. 

"An interesting outcome," Fake Igor says, and all three of them turn to look at him. "Not the one I would have expected to this game, but it seems that an ending has been reached, nevertheless." He looks at Akira, who refuses to back down. "And it's time for the losing pieces to be removed from the game board."

He gestures, and the Velvet Room--

The Velvet Room _explodes_.

Akira is blown backward with the force of a blast that catches him completely flat footed and off guard. There's no fire or flame, only a concussive burst of sudden force that shatters the bars of his cell, breaks the wall behind him, sends him tumbling away from the prison he's been locked in for far too long. There's a pain to it, partially from the debris crashing toward him, but partially from something that hits harder and cuts deeper. He is thrown away from the safety that even this twisted Velvet Room has been able to provide, into a void of unknowable nothingness that tears at his mind and his heart and his soul.

Akira opens his mouth and he _screams_ , a sound of sheer pain, an echo of what he'd heard months ago, in his nightmare of Lavenza being torn in two. The pain of whatever Fake Igor had done to him, wherever he has sent him--not the Velvet Room, not the metaverse, nowhere he recognizes--is unbearable. It claws at every piece of Akira, tearing and ripping at _who he is_ until he can't stand it anymore, until he feels himself drifting away, and almost welcomes the release from the pain.

( _Almost_ )

(He feels hands, small, holding onto his, clinging to his arm)

(He hears shouts beyond his own, from the twins, and what hurts the most is that he's dragged them into this pain with him)

It's too much. He can't stand it. 

He _shatters_.

-//-

_June 25_

_Early Morning_

-//-

When Sojiro walks into Leblanc on Saturday morning, he's greeted by Akira's cat streaking down the attic stairs, yowling and caterwauling loudly enough to wake the dead. 

Sojiro mumbles something irritated at the insane cat that is now standing in front of him shrieking at a volume that Sojiro does not feel like a cat should be capable of reaching. "Akira!" Sojiro calls. "Akira, get down here and take care of your cat!"

There's absolutely no sound from upstairs, although Sojiro's sure that Akira must be awake by now. There's no way that anyone could sleep through the noises the cat's making, never mind Sojiro's own shouting.

"That kid," Sojiro mutters under his breath. He's going to be late for school, too, at this point.

The cat bats at Sojiro's ankle, then runs back toward the attic stairs.

"Right, that's it," Sojiro says, making a shooing gesture with his hand. "Go on, go get Akira up."

The cat responds with another impatient yowl, so Sojiro finally gives up on Akira coming down on his own to take care of his cat. Instead he goes upstairs himself, to see what is keeping that kid. 

Akira is still in bed when Sojiro gets there, and for a second Sojiro hesitates at the top of the stairs, Morgana circling around his feet with new urgency. In the months since Akira moved in here, Sojiro has tried to respect his privacy as much as he can, considering the circumstances of his unusual living situation. He doesn't think he's ever actually been up here before while Akira is still sleeping, but with the cat losing his mind right now, it looks like it's time to break that streak.

"Come on, kid," Sojiro says, crossing the attic and reaching out to shake Akira awake. "Your cat's having some kind of attack, and you're going to be late for..."

He trails off as he puts a hand on Akira's shoulder. The teen is icy cold, and now that Sojiro is close to him, he can see that he's paler than he should be, too, and the rise and fall of his chest is much too slow and shallow.

"Hey," Sojiro says, against a sudden and rising panic. "Kid. _Akira_."

There's no reaction, as a part of Sojiro had already known there wouldn't be. Something's wrong, and it's not something he's equipped to handle. 

Sojiro hurries back downstairs to where he'd left his phone, and calls for an ambulance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No one:  
> Me: _cheerfully throws canon over the side of a cliff_


	30. June 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, so...
> 
> So I know I told like three different people in the comments on yesterday's chapter that I wasn't going to be able to get this one out faster than usual and then, uh.
> 
> Then I realized I was 10k words in and I might as well just cut it there and give you guys an early chapter xD It might delay the next one? I don't even know, I give up on trying to predict my own schedule.

Pain.

There is nothing in the world but pain and the feeling of being _broken,_ maybe broken beyond repair, until suddenly, from nowhere, there is a voice. And the voice asks--

_Have you made the wrong choice?_

_Do you regret the decision to stand by your own rebellion?_

_..._

_..._

_..._

_You have no answer? Very well. Then let us go one step at a time, from the beginning._

-//-

 _He is small, something tiny and vulnerable and_ afraid, newly born to a world he does not yet understand. The world is bright, and he wants to close his eyes and turn away from all these things that are too much and too big for him to understand.

Someone reaches for him, and he feels strong arms lifting him up, holding him against them. Hears a voice close to his ear, half singing, half humming, a lullaby so deeply rooted in his subconscious that he knows it without really _knowing_ it, remembers it without recognizing it. The song strikes a chord deep within him, and he feels calm, he feels _safe_ , and he looks up into the face of his mother.

For a long time she holds him, and there is nothing in the world except for love. There is an endless eternity of pain and terror in the world outside the safety of his mother's arms, but _for this moment_ there is love, and there is comfort, and he can breathe.

-//-

_Do you regret that you were given the chance to live? Will you give it up so easily now?_

_..._

_..._

_..._

_no_

-//-

 _He is nine years old, small for his age and waiting for a growth spurt that feels like_ it's never going to come. He's shorter than almost everyone else in his class, even the girls, he's always the new kid because his parents move around so much, and he's just been told that they're going to move again.

Except this time, apparently, only his _parents_ are going to move again. Without him.

"I don't get it," he says, as he trails after his mom in their rented apartment. "What do you... what do you _mean_ I'm not coming with you next year?"

She moves from room to room like a tornado, trying to tidy things up but usually getting distracted and leaving more of a mess than there had been when she started. It's her usual method of cleaning, which doesn't do much but then again it's not like Akira or his dad are any better about cleaning, so... it's fine _._ Because of that, and because they're always moving in or moving out or sometimes _both_ at the same time, Akira is used to living in a state of semi-organized chaos. He's used to it. It's a part of being in this family, and this family is the only constant Akira has _ever_ known. 

"Listen," his mom tells him now, gathering up a pile of work from the kitchen table. "Akira, honey, I know that it's going to be hard for you to stay at boarding school for the year. But you know that your dad and I have to keep moving around for work."

"Yeah," he says. "But--you always take me with you."

She starts laying the paperwork back out on the counter, organizing them into piles instead of the loose heap they'd been in before. "Things have just been a little bit tougher lately," she tells him. "We're having a harder time finding jobs that will let us stay in one place for a long time, and it's just not fair to you to make you keep moving schools."

"It's not fair that you're _leaving_ me," Akira says. He hears the whine in his voice, but can't stop it. Maybe he doesn't really want to, because it _hurts_ that they want to leave.

His mom goes still where she's standing, the papers only half sorted, and doesn't move at all for a couple seconds. Then she sighs, puts the rest of the work down on the counter, and sits down with her arms open. Akira walks into the hug without a second's hesitation, and wishes _hard_ that she'd change her mind.

"This is going to be better for you," she tells him. "We found you a good school, and you need that. I saw your grades from the last semester."

"Yeah," Akira says. "I know, they were bad, but that was only because--"

"Only because we've been moving so much lately?" his mom asks gently.

Akira shakes his head. "I can work harder," he tells her. "I can get better grades, I promise, I'll be better."

"You haven't done anything wrong," she says, and there's a thread of worry behind the words and in her eyes that Akira is too upset to notice, and too young to understand. "But we need to be able to work, Akira."

"If I haven't done anything wrong, then let me _stay_ with you," Akira pleads.

She doesn't look any happier than Akira feels as she pulls back, takes his hands in hers, and meets his gaze. "It doesn't matter," she tells him quietly. "How far apart we are. Your dad and I will always love you, and we will _always_ be there for you. Distance isn't going to change that. _Nothing_ is going to change that."

"But you'll still be far away," Akira says, and pulls out of her grip before she can stop him. He runs to his room and slams the door, and hides himself in the back corner behind his desk. In the little space that's just big enough for someone his size, he sits with his knees tucked up to his chest, and hides his face in his arms. It's hard to imagine, right at this second, that anything in his entire life will ever feel worse than this.

They don't want him. 

They don't _want_ him.

In a few weeks, he'll be starting fifth grade. And instead of moving to a new city with his parents, he'll be going to a boarding school and they'll be--leaving.

After what feels like forever, there's a knock on his door and his dad comes in. If his mom is a tornado, his dad is quiet and never moves more than he has to. He comes bringing food this time, two reheated bowls full of leftovers from yesterday's dinner, and Akira realizes that it's probably about dinnertime now. He's been curled up and hiding for longer than he thought.

His dad hands Akira one of the bowls, keeps the second for himself, and sits down on the end of Akira's bed. They eat without talking, and although Akira is too stubborn to admit it, he's relieved to not be alone right now.

When the food is gone, his dad stands again, reaches over to take the empty bowl, and puts his other hand on Akira's shoulder. "We wouldn't be doing this," he says. "If we had _any_ other choice."

And that's the end of it, really. His parents have told him that this is the way things are going to go, and there's nothing Akira can do to change their minds. He's nervous, and he wants to stay with his parents. But... this is what they've decided. And he loves them, and he trusts them, and so he starts the new school year alone, yes, but with the knowledge that they haven't abandoned him as much as it sometimes _feels_ like they have. He keeps the memory of his mom's promise that nothing will make them love him less. Keeps the memory of his dad's silent, reassuring presence when all he wants to be alone. 

He tells himself that they still love him. He's still wanted, and he'll be back with them soon.

-//-

_Do you regret the love you had, merely because it was lost so soon?_

_..._

_..._

_no_

-//-

 _He is ten years old, just barely, and his whole world_ is crashing down around him. There's a TV in the school dorms where the dorm mother usually watches the news. Akira doesn't usually pay attention to it, because he's in the fifth grade and could not care less about what's going on in the world. 

But today the big news story is about a big accident. A whole bunch of cars, even a truck. There's fire, and a lot of people had been hurt, and when the camera footage pans across the devastation, Akira sees his parents' car in the wreckage.

It's theirs. He knows it. How many times have they moved, while he sat in the back seat and watched new places roll past outside the window? He _knows_ it's their car, and he only goes up to the dorm computer--which they're only supposed to use for homework--and looks it up to find the names of people that had died so that he'll be _sure_.

And then he is sure, and it's worse, because his parents' names are on the list of people who had died.

Akira prints out the article. He keeps it with him for a long time, folding it and unfolding it to stare at their names like that's going to make them go away, until finally he's folded it so many times that it tears along the crease and he has to throw it away. 

And so now he's all alone, and he just... doesn't know what to do? No one ever comes to tell him his parents are dead, and Akira's not sure if that's because... because maybe no one knows, or maybe no one cares? Maybe he's just supposed to figure it out for himself now that they're gone.

Where does he even start, though?

He throws himself into finding the answer to that question, because he doesn't want to think about the other parts of them dying. That he misses them. That if he'd managed to convince them to take him with them, he might be dead now too. 

Inspiration comes after a schoolwide assembly in October. A boring older man comes and talks to them about a new program that's supposed to 'encourage appreciation for rural areas and promote Japan's small towns. He's boring, he mumbles and drops his notes and clears his throat whenever he talks, and he almost seems apologetic about the fact that everyone is stuck here listening to him.

Most of the school pretty much ignores him, whispering to each other about classes, or what video games they're playing, or what's going on at home. Akira doesn't really listen either, at first, and it's only when he's lying awake late that night that he realizes that this is his chance. It'll give him somewhere to stay for next year at least, put him in a new place, and give him an excuse for why no one will ever see his parents. It's the only plan he's been able to come up with, after months of thinking, and it feels like it might actually be a good one.

He's just not sure if he can do it? He'd have to do a lot of lying, and put in a lot of hard work, and in the end he might get into a lot of trouble for pretending his parents are still alive when they're not.

Something sparks inside him for the first time. An instinct for trouble that has lain dormant inside him, unneeded in a life like the one he's had so far, unneeded by someone that's always done what the adults around him tell him to do. It's been sleeping for ten years but it _wakes_ now, and Akira throws himself into fanning the flames of that spark with a determination that borders on desperation. 

He applies for the transfer program, faking his parents' signatures and putting long hours into double and triple checking every word he puts down. He can't afford to have anyone questioning _anything_ about the application. He can't afford to have anyone looking at him at all.

The last part of the application is also pretty much the easiest. At the very end of the application, he has to select the school he'd like to apply to, and the town where he wants to go to stay. There's a list of about half a dozen options, and since all Akira wants to do is get _away_ , since he doesn't care at all where he's actually _going_ , he picks one entirely at random.

None of the options means anything so Akira closes his eyes and stabs his pencil at the application page in front of him. When he opens his eyes again, the pencil has landed on the town of Yasoinaba. He circles it, then seals the whole thing up inside an envelope an mails it out with a stamp he'd... _borrowed_ from the same dorm mom that likes to watch the news on TV. 

When it's done, Akira stands by the mailbox he's just dropped the application into, and thinks about what he's done. He's never, _never_ , tried anything like this before, and he's a little surprised at what he's been able to do. He could have just said something to someone. He could have asked for help, and let them decide what's going to happen to him. He's a little surprised that he's actually been able to do this.

Surprised, but not... ashamed. Not guilty. He's _proud_ of what he's done, and he thinks it's going to work.

-//-

_Do you regret the decision to stand on your own two feet? To reject the easy way forward, and forge your own path?_

_..._

_no_

-//-

 _He is twelve, and it's been almost a full year since_ he came to Inaba. It's early March, and the school year is almost over. In a month or so he'll be starting at the local middle school. In only a couple of weeks, Yu will be going back to his parents in Tokyo. Today, both of them have come out to the graveyard where Akira's parents' ashes had been laid to rest.

"I know this is pretty weird," Akira says, as they walk down rows of graves, some of them new and clean, others cracked and overgrown after years or decades. "But I, um... I wanted to--introduce you, I guess? That's not the right word. But they're important to me, and _you're_ important to me, and..."

"It's not weird," Yu assures him. "I know your parents are important to you. I'm honored that you'd want me to see their grave."

Akira's not sure if Yu absolutely means it, because wow this is weird, but it's good to hear anyway. "It's just that there's no one else that remembers them," he says. "Not like-- _really_ remembers. I'm sure there's people that knew them, or worked with them, or whatever, but none of them are going to care about coming to see their grave."

"I get it," Yu says. "It's okay, Akira, you don't have to explain."

He _doesn't_ get it, Akira knows, because Yu's parents are still alive. There's no way that he actually could understand what it's like. Not that it's a bad thing? Akira wouldn't wish the deaths of a person's parents on anyone. He's glad that Yu doesn't have to understand this.

They go to the gravesite. Akira had been watching Dojima the last time they came here, and so he's a little bit less confused about what the right thing is to do, the right things to say and do as he kneels in front of the gravesite.

And then there's silence, not awkward like it could have been, but comfortable. Sad, sure, but _comfortable_ at the same time. It's easy to share things with Yu, even hard things. 

"This is the longest I've ever lived in one place," Akira tells Yu, after they've been there for a while. 

"Really?" Yu asks.

Akira nods. "When I start at middle school in April, it'll be the only time I've ever been in the same town for two years in a row. First time I'll ever walk into a classroom and already know people."

"Wow," Yu says. "I thought it was hard to be a transfer student just for this year."

"I always thought it would be hard to have to stay in one place for a long time," Akira admits. "I didn't know why people would want to do something like that." He pokes at the dirt near his shoe. "Then I came here? And I wanted it... I wanted it to be home."

Yu puts an arm around his shoulders. Akira leans into him. 

"Welcome home," Yu tells him.

Akira smiles, big and goofy, like some kind of dork, and thinks--he can't think of anywhere better to stay.

-//-

_Do you regret the choice to make yourself a home? To rebuild your family?_

_..._

_No._

-//-

 _He is sixteen, and this is one of those moments_ that an entire life can revolve around. There's a choice in front of him, and it's the kind that matters. To stand back and let this man assault the woman that's clearly struggling to get away from him, or to step in and intervene.

Choices like this matter. Akira makes his in a heartbeat.

"Hey!" he calls, but neither of the two adults hear him over the sound of them struggling together. He runs closer, and shouts again when he's halfway up the street. This time they both hear, and the man turns to face Akira, one hand still gripping the woman's wrist as she struggles as hard as she can to get away.

"Get out of here," the man says, his words slurring together. "Damn... _brat_." ****

He's drunk, which is not something Akira has a lot of experience dealing with in his own life. Dojima will go out sometimes, but he doesn't really drink around him or Nanako, and he definitely doesn't come home wasted like this guy is.

"Just leave her alone," Akira says, holding his hands up in a _look I'm not going to do anything so just calm down_ gesture. "She doesn't want to go anywhere with you."

The man _does_ actually let go of her (she takes two urgent steps backward, holding her wrist with her other hand, rubbing at it in a way that shows its painful and probably bruised). But he turns on Akira instead, stepping forward, raising an arm to hit him. He's so drunk, and the move is so obviously telegraphed, that Akira has plenty of time to take his own quick steps backward, and the man overbalances and falls on his face instead.

Which is when the man starts to curse and scream, and finally the noise brings enough attention to them that _someone_ in one of the nearby houses calls the police.

-//-

_Was your previous decision a mistake, then? Do you regret the choice to save another and doom yourself?_

_No._

-//-

 _He is seventeen, and he stands before_ power, stares through the bars of his Velvet Room cell, meets the gaze of an entity he has no name for and doesn't understand. He is angry, but not so angry that he doesn't _know_ he is outclassed.

And he stands there anyway.

He tells this imposter that he is done playing his game. He is hurt, and he is angry, and he is not going to do what's expected of him for another second.

The imposter lashes out at him. He is hurt, and he is being pushed away, punished, _exiled_. He is being torn to pieces, left to cling to whatever parts of himself that he can. To scream in wordless agony at the pain that feels like it will never end, and to try and build himself back up with only sheer stubborn force of will, and the help of the voice in his head.

Arsene's voice.

_-//-_

_Do you regret the line you chose to draw in the sand?_

_No._

_Do you regret the choice to announce that you will go this far, and no further?_

_No!_

_Will you let everything you have fought for come to nothing?_

"No!"

_Then enough of this. Reclaim your rebellion with your own two hands, and show the world what a Trickster can do._

_There is a surge of energy from deep within him, scattering the pain and driving it away from him. He feels himself again, not a memory but really himself, whole and present, battered by Fake Igor's strength but not ready to break._

_He feels weight on his face and reaches up to his mask. There is resistance so he pulls, straining against unexpected resistance, fingers digging in, adrenaline racing through him. He feels blood on his face, there's a pain there that cuts deep but feels like healing, and he finally manages to tear the mask away._

_Blood streams down his face and blue fire pours out as Arsene answers his call with more power and more joy than he has felt since his Persona first awoke long ago in Inaba._

_"Persona!" he shouts, and Arsene comes. His other self, his I-am-thou-and-thou-art-I. He brings with him all the shattered pieces of Akira that had been broken away by whatever Fake Igor had done. The sheer force of his arrival banishes the pain for good, and Akira--_

Wakes. Not in his bed in the attic of Leblanc, but somewhere new that he doesn't recognize. There's an unpleasant heaviness in the air, like the tension in Mementos but worse. It would have been a pretty terrible way to wake up, honestly, except that Akira's immediate surroundings are disconcertingly cheerful. There's a miniature car parked behind him like a wall, too small for any adult to drive, and with a kind of rounded design that makes it sort of look... cute? Around him, built up like a kind of miniature room, are crates stacked high enough that Akira can't actually see anything past them.

...someone's tied a balloon shaped like a star to the top of one of the crates, for some reason.

A gasp from nearby brings Akira's attention to a gap in the crates, and he turns quickly ( _ow_ ) to see the smiling face of an unfamiliar boy peeking in at him.

"He's awake!" the boy announces, and disappears from Akira's sight before he has a chance to ask even a single question. He can hear quick footsteps running away, and then a distant voice calling, "Elizabeth, he's awake!"

Okay, so... Elizabeth's here, which probably shouldn't make him feel that much better, but does. He has no idea where he is or what's going on (he'd been ejected from the Velvet Room, he has _no clue_ how he gets from there to here). But at least he has a sort of deal with Elizabeth, so there's a chance that he might be about to get some kind of explanation.

Akira maneuvers himself, through tight muscles and bone deep pain, so that he can prop himself up and try to push up into a sitting position. He doesn't quite manage it, though--his arms shake, and he just doesn't have any strength. In the end he eases himself back down, lying on the floor where he'd woken up, and just waits.

There's... really nothing else he can do at this point.

-//-

_June 25_

_Morning_

-//-

Sojiro goes with Akira to the hospital, because he's the kid's guardian until at least the end of the school year, and that means that whatever medical decisions are going to need to be made, he's the one that's ultimately going to have to sign off on them. And there are definitely going to be decisions that will have to be made. Sojiro's no doctor, but even he can tell that there's something very, very wrong with Akira right now.

Someone takes Akira away as soon as the ambulance arrives at the hospital, leaving Sojiro to wait for someone to come and tell him what's going to happen next. He paces for a while in a waiting room half-full of other worried families, and after about half an hour thinks to call Futaba.

She doesn't pick up, which isn't a huge surprise at this time of the morning. He leaves a message instead, telling her to lock up the café when she gets up, and to make sure Morgana is fed. He'd forgotten to do both things, in the urgency of making sure Akira gets help.

"Something... happened," he says, hesitating because he's not sure how to explain. He'd much rather tell her everything later, when he has more information and he won't have to say it into her voicemail. She and Akira have gotten close, and Sojiro wants to be able to hear her voice when he tells her. "Call me when you wake up, Futaba. I have to go now, but I'll talk to you soon." He hangs up quickly, bracing for the nurse that he's noticed hurrying toward him.

There are no answers she tells him, just a lot of questions. The doctors are running tests and examining Akira, but so far they haven't found any cause for the fact that his body seems to just be suddenly shutting down. "We need as much information about his medical history as possible," the nurse tells him. "Any serious prior illnesses, injuries, anything."

Sojiro shakes his head helplessly. "He's an orphan," he explains. "And he was only put into my care a few months ago--I have all his paperwork, but I wasn't expecting something like this to happen, so I haven't exactly read through it. I'll answer what I can, but I'll have to get the rest to you after I've had a chance to get everything from back home."

"The sooner the better," the nurse tells him, and Sojiro frowns at the clear urgency.

"Things are that bad?" he asks.

"He's in the ICU and being put on life support now," the nurse explains gently, in the well practiced tone of someone who has to give talks like this every day. "We don't know what's wrong with him, but his condition is deteriorating. Right now our priority is just to keep him stable until we can figure out how to help him."

Sojiro nods. "My daughter's back home still," he says. "I'll see if I can get her to send pictures of his files, that'll probably be faster than waiting until I can get home."

"Then please do that," the nurse says. "And if you have contact information for his primary care provider, that would be helpful too."

"I'll... try and find out." He knows that Akira's been to see Dr. Takemi a few times since he's been here, but as far as he knows that's only been for minor things. There's probably someone from before he came to Tokyo that will know more about Akira's health.

The nurse nods, and tells him how to contact her when he has the information they need. Sojiro promises to be as fast as he can, and when she has walked away, he starts thinking about how he can possibly get the information from Akira's hometown, and realizes that there's another phone call he should have made already.

He'd saved Ryotaro Dojima's number in his cell phone the day that the detective gave it to him, so he steps into a quiet corner of the waiting room and calls it now. The phone rings several times, and Sojiro is just starting to think that he might have to leave a message here, too, when he hears the click of the phone picking up.

"Dojima."

He takes a deep breath. "This is Sojiro Sakura," he says. "I'm... calling about Akira."

"He's gotten himself in some kind of trouble, then?" Dojima asks. He sounds completely unsurprised, almost like he's been expecting this call.

"No," Sojiro says, and every fiber in him hates that he's going to have to be the one to explain this. Who else is going to do it, though? "He's in the hospital. The doctors are still trying to figure out what it is exactly, but--" But he's cold, and barely breathing, and won't wake up. "But it doesn't look good. A nurse just came out and told me he's being put on life support."

There are shuffling sounds from the other end of the call, and Dojima asks, "What hospital is it?"

"I can send you the name and the address," Sojiro tells him. "I assume you're coming up here." There's no thinking about Akira's parole right now. He might actually be dying, and Sojiro's not the kind of monster that would try to keep Dojima away. If his parole officer or family services wants to complain, Sojiro is ready and willing to stand up for this.

"I am," Dojima says.

"I thought you would when I called," Sojiro says. "It's one of the reasons I wanted to get in touch. The other is that they're asking for his medical history, and I don't know--"

"I'll send you the name of his doctor here," Dojima says. "And I'll call ahead to let him know what's going on, so he won't wonder why he's getting a call from a Tokyo hospital."

They say their goodbyes, and Sojiro ends the call. He sends Dojima the hospital information, and gets a text with the name and number of Akira's regular doctor in return. He brings this information to the same nurse that he'd talked to before, and then there's nothing else to do but wait.

Futaba calls him around ten, panicked and having already pieced together most of the story. Apparently she'd tracked him (Sojiro is really going to need to figure out how to switch that phone setting off) after she found the attic a mess, the cat going half crazy, and Akira's phone abandoned. Sojiro does his best to explain, but since the doctors still haven't learned anything new, there's not much he can say.

"He's not going to die," Futaba says. "Is he?"

He hesitates.

" _Is_ he, Sojiro?"

"I'm not going to make that guarantee," Sojiro tells her quietly. "I can't. They don't know what's wrong with him, and he's already been put on life support."

" _No!_ "

"Futaba..."

"Can I come?" Futaba asks. "To the hospital, I mean? To see him?"

"They're not letting anyone see him right now," Sojiro tells her. "But if you want to come here so you know if there's any change, you can do that."

"I'll be there in an hour," Futaba says.

-//-

_????_

-//-

Akira isn't sure how long he waits. He thinks he drifts off again, and when he wakes he isn't sure if it's been a few minutes, a few hours, or even a few days. He feels a little stronger, though, and is able to sit up when he realizes that he's not alone. Elizabeth is hovering over him, _really_ close, actually, and they almost knock foreheads when Akira sits up suddenly.

"I was just checking in on you," she says, taking a step backward and giving him a little bit of room. "Jose told me that you were awake, but you _looked_ like you were still asleep."

"Jose?" Akira repeats, and then realizes. "Oh. The kid I saw earlier?"

Elizabeth nods. "It was a stroke of luck finding him while I was searching for you and my sister," she says. "I think he's gone searching for flowers, though, so you can meet him later."

"Flowers?" Akira repeats.

"I suppose he has a particular interest in eating them," Elizabeth says, as if this is meant to explain anything. "But I'm sure you have questions about more than just Jose."

"Yeah, actually," Akira says. "About a hundred." And the first is one he should have thought about earlier, but it hadn't occurred to him until he heard Elizabeth mention her sister. "What happened to the twins?"

"They are nearby," Elizabeth says. "And still regaining consciousness. I found you first and brought you back here before going back to retrieve them. Which is a good thing for you, by the way. They survived being split into two, but I don't think that you could have done the same. Or that you could have lingered much longer in the Sea of Souls without permanent damage."

"Is that what happened?" Akira asks. "I remember that I confronted Fake Igor--" He doesn't meet Elizabeth's gaze, because in retrospect yes. It had been stupid. But he couldn't have done anything else, he knows that now. He doesn't have it in him to act like nothing's wrong when _everything_ is. "And he... I guess blew up part of the Velvet Room?"

"It will heal," Elizabeth tells him unconcernedly. "The Velvet Room has reformed into many different shapes across time. It will heal itself from this as well."

"Good," Akira says. "I don't like Fake Igor, but I'd have felt really bad about it if I got the Velvet Room blown up."

Elizabeth smiles. "I might have said that I doubted even you could manage it," she says. "But you have survived an attack that split my sister into two, and shattered you into many more pieces. I am not sure that there is _any_ level of trouble you could not achieve with sufficient motivation."

Akira's not sure if he's being praised or scolded, so he decides that the safest thing to do is probably to change the subject.

"So he tried to do the same thing to me that he did to Lavenza?" Akira asks.

"He did not try," Elizabeth says. "He succeeded."

Akira looks down at himself for the first time since waking, just to check that he is still--well, himself. Not half of him split into two, the way Caroline and Justine are each half of Lavenza. Which is when he realizes that yes he still _is_ himself, but he's also slightly translucent. He's wearing his Phantom Thief outfit, and he can see straight through clothes and skin alike to the ground below.

"That's, uh..." He holds his gloved hand up, looking through it and up to Elizabeth. "That's kind of weird and alarming. Is that what you were talking about, being split into pieces?"

" _That_ ," she says. "Is merely a side effect of your soul being separated from your body."

Akira blinks. "Wait," he says. "Hang on--"

"But your soul itself is what I was referring to," Elizabeth says. "When I first found you in the sea of souls, your soul had been split into so many pieces I thought that surely you would be lost forever."

She sounds _way_ too calm about that idea.

"But you pulled yourself together," Elizabeth says. "Enough for me to bring you back here." Her head tilts slightly to one side. "I'm curious how you managed that."

Akira remembers the calm, constant voice that had never, not for a second, left him. That had helped him gather the pieces of himself that had scattered when he was ejected from the Velvet Room, helped him pull back all the memories and feelings that had been lost to the pain. "It was Arsene," he tells Elizabeth, and then when he realizes from her expression that she doesn't recognize the name, he adds, "My Persona. My _original_ Persona, not one I recruited or fused later."

This time, Elizabeth nods. "That would make sense," she says. "As long as that most central part of you remained intact, it would give you some small opening to... reclaim yourself."

Akira suppresses a shiver. From Elizabeth's tone, he doesn't think that his odds were _good_ , even with Arsene's help. He wonders how close he'd come to being gone forever, and decides that he doesn't want to know. Probably he'd been _very_ lucky, if even Lavenza hadn't been able to keep herself together through a similar attack. Although on the other hand, he's not sure he's ever seen her use a Persona on her own--the one or two times she's fought in front of him, it's always been with multiple Persona, and not with something that seemed specifically _hers_. Maybe she doesn't have something like Arsene.

He decides to put this aside for later. "How did you know to come looking for us in the first place?" he asks Elizabeth.

"The Velvet Room has been sealed," Elizabeth says. "Something that I have never seen before." She shrugs. "I assumed from your reputation that you would somehow turn out to be the cause of it."

"Hey," Akira mutters.

"I was right," Elizabeth says. "So you are _not_ allowed to argue. In any case, I searched for a disruption, and eventually found you, and then my sister. I brought you here, where Jose agreed to give us a safe place to stay."

"Where... is here, exactly?" Akira asks.

"The depths of Mementos," Elizabeth says. "Close to the Velvet Room."

"The _Velvet Room_ is at the bottom of Mementos?" Akira asks.

"It seems to have found its way here," Elizabeth says. "There are doors on the surface, in Palaces, and in the real world," she says. "But the Velvet Room is close to here. I assume because of the imposter's actions."

"This is nuts," Akira says, dropping his head into his still translucent hands. "Is there any other bad news I should know about?"

"I believe we've covered most of it," Elizabeth says. "And I do also have some good news to share. _"_

"Oh yeah?"

"Yes," Elizabeth says. "When I watched the shattered pieces of you reform within the Sea of Souls, there was one piece that did not seem to have belonged originally to _you_."

He lifts his head, totally confused, and watches Elizabeth smile as if he should be able to guess what she's getting at. "Who did it belong to, then?"

"My sister," she says. "I don't dare guess how _you_ ended up with the piece of her that was missing, but it's there."

Akira doesn't have any guess how it got there either. "You're sure?" he asks. "I mean--you're _definitely_ sure?"

"I am," Elizabeth says. "Do _you_ know how you ended up with that missing piece?"

"No," Akira says immediately. "I have no idea how--"

 _("_ _Whatever horrible thing happens to me, a part of me is going to stay safe with you. And we're all going to forget what happens here, so you won't know it, and I won't know it, but that piece of me will be with you."_ )

...and suddenly he _remembers_ , he thinks? A series of labyrinths, and meeting the Phantom Thieves when he was twelve, and then coming back and doing it all over again. And Lavenza, offering him a piece of herself for safekeeping before they were all forced to forget what had happened.

_What?_

"Hypothetically," he says to Elizabeth. "When I was all... broken, in the--whatever you called it."

"The Sea of Souls," she says. "Or the Collective Unconscious."

"Sure," Akira says. "Hypothetically, when I was all broken up in there, and pulling myself back together, would it have been possible to get back memories that I had _already_ lost?"

"More than likely," Elizabeth says. "The Sea of Souls would not be an unlikely place for lost memories to gather."

"Then I think I might actually know how this happened," Akira says. "But it's sort of... I don't know. Still coming back." The memories don't _quite_ fit right, like they know they're not supposed to be in his head, and he has a feeling it's going to take some thinking over to get it all to fit right in his head again. He can figure that out after all this is over. "But since I have that piece," he says. "Does that mean we can..."

He can't say it. If he says it out loud and Elizabeth tells him it's not possible, Akira can't imagine what he would do.

"She can be fused back into herself," Elizabeth confirms. "Yes. But we will have to move quickly, before the Velvet Room heals itself from the explosion you spoke of."

"Why does that matter?" Akira asks.

"There is currently a good deal of energy leaking out from the Velvet Room," Elizabeth tells him. "And it is far simpler to perform fusions from within that room, surrounded by that energy. Since its entrances have been sealed, and it seems unlikely that we will be able to reenter any time soon, this is our best chance to return my sister to herself."

"But wh--"

"Let us just say that if I took the time to explain how all of this works," Elizabeth says. "We would certainly _not_ have the time to help my sister. And I don't think that either of us wants to risk that."

"No," Akira says quickly. "No, let's go." He tries to stand, but can't manage it on legs that scream in protesting pain. Elizabeth offers him a hand up, and Akira takes it gratefully. Then he pauses, staring at the contrast between his hand and hers. He looks even less solid when he's looking at the two of them together. "This is... going to stop eventually," he says. "Right?"

"Eventually," Elizabeth tells him, as she hauls him to his feet. 

-//-

_June 25_

_Morning_

-//-

Yu has been expecting to hear from the Phantom Thieves today, but when the call finally comes, it's from Futaba and not Akira.

He stares at the caller ID for a couple seconds, wondering why she would be calling him, weighing whether he wants to talk to Futaba about Okumura before he's even had a chance to hear from Akira. That has to be what this call is about, right? About the Palace he _knows_ they'd been working on until just a few days ago, whose ruler had died horribly on live TV just last night. It had made Yu sick to his stomach to watch, and he's been trying to figure out what he's going to say to Akira when he inevitably calls.

Except Akira hasn't called. Futaba is instead.

Yu picks up. "Hey," he says. "Are you--"

"You have to come meet us at the hospital," Futaba says, so fast that Yu has to ask her to repeat herself more slowly.

"You have to come _meet us_ ," she says again, enunciating clearly this time. " _At the hospital._ "

He hears the words this time, but for several long seconds they just... they just don't make any sense. "Why?" he asks. "What happened, what's going on?"

"Akira's sick," Futaba says. "Hurt, something. I don't know. Nobody knows. He wouldn't wake up this morning, and Morgana says he was--was cold, and not breathing right."

Her voice shakes. She's scared, and Yu realizes that he is too. This has nothing to do with the metaverse, nothing to do with Shadows or Persona. If Akira is sick, then there's absolutely nothing that any of them can do to help him. It doesn't matter how strong they are in the metaverse, what they've fought or what they've overcome. Akira's body has failed him in some way, and they're helpless to do anything about it.

(He thinks of waiting for Nanako to recover after being kidnapped in the TV World)

(Thinks of how he'd felt when he learned she'd died for a few minutes, and feels cold all over)

"I'll come," he says. "Right away. Is he--"

"Sojiro says he's in the ICU," Futaba says. "And he's already been put on life support." There's a noise from her side that makes it clear she's crying. "And Sojiro actually called your uncle, so he and Nanako are coming up to the city. It's... it's _bad_ , Yu. It's really bad."

"Okay," Yu says. "I'll be there as soon as I can. Do you need anything? Or..."

"No," Futaba says. "I just... I know you'd want to be there."

He does. As soon as he hangs up, he grabs his things and heads out to the hospital. And while most of the time he takes the trains to travel around the city, today he looks at the schedule and the transfers he'll have to make to get out to the hospital, and decides to spend the money on a taxi. More expensive but also faster, and worth the price just this one time. 

Which is a lucky decision, really, because if he'd been on the train he never would have gone through Shibuya, and he never would have gotten the glimpse that he does of the Velvet Room door.

"I'm getting out here," he tells the taxi driver. "I just--" No _way_. "Here. I need get out here."

"You're sure?" the driver says skeptically. "We're nowhere near--"

"Positive," Yu says, and leaves enough cash to cover the fee on the seat as he opens the door and jumps out almost before the car has stopped moving. So that's one taxi driver in Tokyo that think he's nuts, but Yu absolutely could not care less right now. He weaves through the crowds until he gets to the back alley, the one with the Velvet Room door. He had only been able to get a glimpse of it from the street, but now he sees it in full and stops, staring.

Up until now, whenever Yu has seen the Velvet Room door in Tokyo, it's looked like a relatively simple prison door. The bars across it make it unmistakably a cell, but it had been easy to overlook at a glance. This is... different. The door that Yu sees now is still a prison door, still closed with thick metal bars. But it's grown suddenly large, easily twice the size of the previous one, with a heavy iron frame at least a foot wide. Chains wrap themselves around the door, curling through and around the bars, the frame, wrapped up so tightly in knots that Yu can't even see where he'd start trying to untangle them if he tried. The ends of the chains reach outward and upward, so high up that when Yu cranes his neck up and squints, he can't even see their ends.

There's no sign of Caroline either, even though she seems to be constantly on guard here in the real world. Yu doesn't think he's ever seen the Velvet Room without one of the twins watching over it, so the fact that neither of them is here now makes him (almost) as worried as the change to the door itself.

Almost without daring to take his eyes off the door, he fumbles for his phone and texts Futaba.

> **Futaba Sakura**
> 
> You said that whatever happened to Akira, it happened overnight, right?
> 
> I guess? Morgana says he was like that when he woke up. Why?

Because he knows Akira has dreams about the Velvet Room, just like Yu used to have in Inaba. Because there's an imposter in the Velvet Room, and maybe, whoever he is, he could have done this to Akira.

> **Futaba Sakura**
> 
> I think what happened to him might be related to the metaverse
> 
> I'll explain in person when I get to the hospital
> 
> You better, don't you dare leave it like that

Yu gives the Velvet Room door one last look, then beats a hasty retreat. There's no way this is a good thing. There's no _way_ it's a coincidence, either, and Yu really wishes that he could just _ask_ Akira about what had happened, but--

But it means that this isn't some freak medical emergency after all. It means that this isn't Akira having a brain aneurism or falling into a coma or anything like that. It means that whatever's happened to him, it's almost definitely a direct result of him getting himself into some kind of trouble inside the Velvet Room. 

And if there's anyone in the world that can tick off some otherworldly power masquerading as the master of the Velvet Room, slip into a coma, be rushed to the ICU, and _still worm his way out of it all,_ it would be Akira.

They have a chance now, a slim but _real_ chance, and so it's a much more optimistic Yu that rushes as quickly as he can toward the hospital.

-//-

_??????  
_

-//-

Walking is a struggle for Akira. Whatever had happened to him when he was ejected from the Velvet Room, apparently it had literally shredded his soul into pieces. Even if he's whole again now, the stress of that is taking a toll on him. It doesn't feel fair that it would be this painful to walk after Elizabeth while he's apparently just a soul without a body, but here he is. Stiff all over, aching and still in _pain_.

"Elizabeth?" he asks, tentatively.

"Yes?"

"What did you mean when you said that my soul is separated from my body?" he asks. "How does something like that happen?"

"I take it you were dreaming of the Velvet Room when you confronted the imposter, and were ejected," Elizabeth says.

"Yeah," Akira says. "Why?"

"Because your body does not enter the Velvet Room when you dream," Elizabeth says. "Your soul was ejected, but your body stayed where it was."

Akira winces. "Is that something we can fix?" he asks.

"It should be," she says. "Once you've regained some strength." She looks pointedly at him-- _through_ him, really--and Akira nods. Got it, sure. No reunions with his body until he's a little more solid looking. And anyway, it's not like getting back to the real world is something he's in a particular rush to prioritize when there are things here that still need to be taken care of.

The twins aren't far from the place where Akira had woken up, which is great not only because of how hard it is to walk, but also because Akira has a much better view of his surroundings now that he's on his feet, and he doesn't love the idea of walking too far into it. There's dark, monolithic stone all around, with traces of foreboding red here and there. Akira can see cells too, all of the occupied. He doesn't really know why, because honestly it's a lot less gross than the upper levels of Mementos, but it kind of makes him want to vomit.

He tries to ignore it, and focus on the twins instead. They're with the boy from before, Jose, who gesticulates enthusiastically as he tells the twins some story that Akira can't quite hear from where he is.

"So what's up with Jose, exactly?" he asks Elizabeth in an undertone.

"I don't really know," she says. "I found him here when I brought you back. But he _seems_ friendly, and the Shadows are leaving him alone, so it seemed like a good idea to work with him."

Akira has to admit that Jose _does_ look friendly, and the Shadows _do_ seem to be leaving him alone. In fact, they've been leaving all of them alone since Akira woke up. So... probably he's okay to trust?

He's not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, there is just way too much going on right now for that. Jose seems friendly, Elizabeth and the twins are obviously okay with him, and (Akira shoots a look back over his shoulder at the car that he thinks is probably the right size for Jose) it's just really hard to imagine anyone dangerous driving around with sparkly star shaped balloons tied to his car.

"Good news!" Elizabeth announces without any preamble, as she and Akira reach the other three. "Sister, your Trickster has the missing piece of you. If you want to be fused back together, now would be the time."

" _You_ have it?" Caroline asks Akira, and he grins at how she manages to mingle surprise and outrage in just three syllables.

"Long story," Akira tells her.

"We're really going to do the fusion now?" Justine askes.

"If you want to," Akira says. As much as he wants to see Lavenza again, he's not going to force either of them into doing something that they don't want to. And maybe they don't want to give up being who they are now, to go back to being someone they don't even remember. 

But both of them nod, more eagerly than he would have expected, and Akira is relieved.

"Then we'll start," Elizabeth says. "This will take longer than it would in the Velvet Room, but we'll do our best."

"Just no fusion accidents," Akira mutters, because he's seen a few of those happen in the Velvet Room before, and he really doesn't want to get soclose and have it happen today, now, for _this_.

(He doesn't even know where they'd get a chainsaw)

Elizabeth hardly seems to hear his comment. She looks, suddenly, very serious, and gestures for both twins to sit down before kneeling in front of them herself. "Hold her hand, Trickster," she says to Akira, as her eyes close.

"Which one?" Akira asks, hesitating between Caroline and Justine.

"Both of them," Elizabeth says.

So Akira sits too, and holds out the same hand that had once held Lavenza's, when she'd given him that missing piece of herself. Caroline slaps her own down on top of his first, and Justine follows a moment or two later. Akira closes his fingers over both of them, and looks to Elizabeth for what they're supposed to do next.

She doesn't move for a very long time, or say anything. Instead she starts to hum under her breath, a melody that is... unfortunately so out of tune that Akira doesn't recognize it at all.

"What is that?" Jose asks, almost tiptoeing forward to where the other four are already crowded together in a tight huddle. Akira is sitting to Elizabeth's right, with the twins still in front of her, so Jose plops himself down on her left and looks hopefully at all of them for an explanation. 

"It's the song from the Velvet Room," Justine says, and Akira realizes with a jolt that he _has_ heard it before. It's always there in the Velvet Room he's been in since coming to Tokyo, and he'd heard it back in Inaba the few times he'd gone inside with Yu. 

...it's just that it had always sounded a little less out of tune inside the Velvet Room.

"It is... helpful," Elizabeth says. "For fusions. I'm not sure how much good it will do here, outside the Velvet Room, but it's not going to hurt anything."

"It is if you do it wrong," Caroline says, and Elizabeth opens her eyes to give her sister a _look_.

"So what is it supposed to sound like?" Jose asks Caroline, who flushes pink and mumbles something about not being a singer so don't ask her.

Akira's not much good with music either, but he's at least heard the song. "It's kind of like..." he hums a few notes, and Justine nods.

"Like that," she says, and to Akira's surprise she joins in, humming along with him. He might have stopped out of self consciousness after a few seconds if he was doing it alone, but since Justine's doing it too, he keeps going. Elizabeth's off key attempt levels out a little, when she has the rest of them to listen to, and after Justine digs her elbow into Caroline's side, she joins in too. Even Jose gives it a try after they've been going for a while, his voice uncertain but gaining confidence.

And so there they sit, crowded together on the floor of the dark, horrible prison in the depths of Mementos, all crowded in together, Elizabeth vocalizing and the rest of them humming along, until the song almost seems to take on a life of its own, until the air around them shimmers with something like a deep blue haze. It should feel ridiculous, but Akira feels...

He feels like how he imagines it _should_ feel, in the Velvet Room. Not as a tagalong with Yu, and not as a prisoner. This is how it should feel as a guest. 

There's a fluttering against the palm of his hand, and he watches through his own translucent fingers as a tiny blue butterfly breaks free. He can feel it pushing through the skin, tugging away from his soul, and as it drifts upward toward the twins there is a sudden flash of bright, white light. Akira throws up an arm (not the one holding the twins) to shield his eyes. The feeling of the twins' presence in front of him fades as the light intensifies, and long seconds later, when he's blinked spots away from his eyes, Akira realizes that he's alone with Jose.

He stands--adrenaline and fear making it easier than when he'd tried it before--and looks around for the other three. He spots Elizabeth first, bent over several feet away and talking to someone that Akira can't see from this angle. But he hurries toward them anyway, as fast as he can manage, his heart pounding. Elizabeth obviously hears him coming because she stands and turns toward him, keeping herself between Akira and the person ( _Lavenza, please_ ) she'd been bending down to examine.

Akira looks at Elizabeth. He doesn't say anything, but he knows the question he wants to ask is written all over his face behind the mask.

"That missing piece of her must have been with you for a long time," she tells Akira. She sounds thoughtful, like she's weighing things in her mind, trying to make up her mind whether she's bringing good news or bad news. "It grew up with you."

"What does that mean?" Akira asks. 

Elizabeth searches her face, and then without any warning, she smiles. "Oh," she says. "Nothing that I think will make any difference to either of you." She steps back so that Akira can, _finally_ , get a good look at the girl huddled up on the floor behind her. Or not a girl, _girl_ is the wrong word, because this is someone his own age or maybe even a year older. For a second Akira isn't sure, doesn't really believe that the fusion has worked. How could it, outside the Velvet Room, in _this_ place? With only an ex-attendant of the Velvet Room, a human Trickster, and _whatever_ Jose is, to help the process along?

(It can't have worked)

( _It has to have worked_ )

Then she looks up, and Akira understands what Elizabeth had meant about that piece of Lavenza growing up with him. Because it's Lavenza sitting there looking at him, it's _Lavenza_ that has grown up. She's older now, but she is at last herself again. Akira stares at her, unable to stop himself, and he knows the shape of her face, the look in her eyes, the expression she wears when she sees him.

He'd run to her if he could have. Instead he walks, pushing himself as she stands, grimacing with visible effort after what _she's_ been through. Akira reaches her just as she finds her feet, and then--then he stops. They are _exactly_ the same height now, and for what feels like forever they look at each other, just look. Akira doesn't know what Lavenza is thinking but he knows that the only thought in his mind is that he still can't really believe that she's back.

He takes the last step forward and wraps his arms around her, holds her, feels her lean into him at once in a way that assures him she's real, she's here and she's whole and if all it took to bring her back was being broken into a million pieces and temporarily separated from his body, then it's worth it.

"I can't believe you did that," Lavenza whispers, making no movement at all to pull away from him.

"I'm sorry it took so long," Akira says.

She laughs, half strangled, sounding unbelievably tired. "How many other people do you think would have tried at all?" she asks. "And you're sorry that it took _too long_."

"It did," he insists. "It took _way_ too long, I--" There's a tsunami of emotions rushing through him, and he doesn't know where to start. "I missed you."

He thinks he hears a smile in her voice. "Well," she says. "Here I am."

Here she is. 

Akira's face starts to hurt, and since everything else _already_ hurts, he assumes for a confused second that it's just another lingering side effect of everything that's happened to him. Then he realizes he's smiling so hard that it's actually started to hurt. "So what do you think?" he asks Lavenza. "Do we go after Fake Igor now, or...?"

"One thing at a time, Trickster," she tells him, laughing and a thrill runs through Akira at the way _Trickster_ sounds on her tongue.

"We can wait before we go after him," he agrees, because honestly? Right now there's nowhere in the world--

No. That's not quite right.

There's nowhere in the real world, nowhere in Mementos, nowhere in the Sea of Souls or any other plane of existence he can name, _nowhere_ that he would rather be than right here, with her _._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I have a lot of headcanons about how the Velvet Room works. I'm hoping it makes at least some sense?
> 
> AND IF NOT, TOO BAD, BECAUSE WE HAVE AN ALIVE LAVENZA NOW AND THAT'S ALL I WANTED.
> 
> Next chapter, more frantic scrambling by Akira's friends in the real world to keep his body alive long enough for him to get back to it lol. In the meantime, I'm going to try and get some actual sleep now please xD


	31. June 25

_????_

-//-

Akira falls asleep not long after Lavenza's fusion. 

She can see that he doesn't want to, that he's fighting to stay awake, but he's been through something too. He'd been thrown out of the Velvet Room, separated from his own body, and shattered into a million pieces. He needs rest right now more than anything, and so as much as Lavenza wants the chance to talk to him, she insists that he go back to the cubbyhole that's been built from Jose's things, and _sleep_.

He agrees eventually, with all the stubborn reluctance Lavenza remembers so well. 

"There will be time to talk later," she tells him. "But you need rest to heal."

"I'm doing fine," Akira tells her.

She raises her eyebrows in an attempt at unimpressed skepticism, but it's undercut by the smile she just can't hide. He doesn't change. He grows up and grows older, but who he is deep down just doesn't _change_. "Don't try to lie to me right now," she says. "I can see right through you."

And he must actually be exhausted, because Lavenza doesn't think that there's anything else in the world that would make him stop arguing at this point. He laughs a little at her terrible joke, and--sleeps, if that is even the right word. A body needs sleep because it needs rest, needs a time to stop moving and recover from the things it goes through during the day. A soul has other needs, ones that Lavenza can only hope Akira can meet through sleep right now.

She sits on the ground next to him, watching with her knees against her chest, thinking, trying to settle her own racing mind. She has months worth of memories that will need to be reexamined and reassessed now that she knows who she is. Memories of the Velvet Room and of Akira, 

Much of what she remembers is concerning. She understands more of what she had seen in the Velvet Room, things that had lacked context for when she was two people without a shred of past between them. And she understands more of what she had done, while she was under the control of someone she'd believed was her master. She is repulsed by some of the things that she had said and done. She has not been faithful to her duties, and she has not always been a friend to her Trickster. 

_Inmate_ , she had called him, because that is how the imposter had spoken of him, and she had believed...

Elizabeth sits next to Lavenza after a while. "So who is it?" she asks. "In the Velvet Room?"

Lavenza stirs slightly, turning to look at her sister. "Yaldabaoth," she says. "I don't know how he came into the Velvet Room, but he did. It was sudden, and violent. He went for our master first, he tore me to pieces." It had been so sudden, so _fast_. There had barely been time to do anything at all.

(She is glad, looking back at it, that her first and only thought had been to reach out to Akira, to try and help him however she could)

Elizabeth's reply is a thoughtful hum. "I suppose we already knew that there were no _good_ answers to the question of who could have taken over that room. What happened to our siblings?"

Lavenza shakes her head. "Everything happened quickly," she says. "I didn't see. I suppose the most likely answer is that they are trapped with our master."

"And the Velvet Room is sealed now," Elizabeth says. "Reaching him will not be easy."

Lavenza is very aware of this. If the Velvet Room really has been sealed, that means that she has been cut off from her home. She feels the loss, not _deeply,_ not yet, but only because today has changed so many things that she is still trying to catch up to all of them. 

(She does feel it, though)

"We're going to have to take it back," Lavenza says, and even the idea of that--of fighting for the Velvet Room, against an entity that has already done so much damage to her--is enough to send a wave of exhaustion through her battered body. She doesn't know that she's going to be in any condition to fight any time soon.

"It might have been easier if your guest had not confronted him," Elizabeth suggests.

Lavenza bristles, a spike of defensiveness piercing through her. "He did what he felt he had to do," she says. "He learned that things were wrong, and he--"

She realizes that Elizabeth is laughing at her. "It seems that you're very fond of him," Elizabeth says. 

"Is that what you wanted to see?" Lavenza asks. She has the definite idea, looking at Elizabeth's laughter, that she had been baited by the question. "I..." She glances down at Akira, to check that he's still asleep. She watches for several seconds, actually, to make sure that he really is not awake and listening and only _pretending_ to be asleep. "I am fond of him, yes."

"Merely fond?" Elizabeth asks. She raises her eyebrows, and Lavenza flushes.

"I'm not going to talk about this with you," Lavenza says. "I was two people an hour ago. I am not going to talk about... _this_ , right now." Suddenly, she absolutely cannot meet Elizabeth's eyes. She can imagine her sister's expression perfectly, without needing to see it. "We have more important things to talk about."

"So you would honestly rather talk about what has been happening in the Velvet Room?" Elizabeth asks.

" _Yes_ ," Lavenza says. Or anything else, really. 

"Do you have any ideas for getting inside?" Elizabeth asks. "To a Velvet Room that has been sealed by something that has already proved it can swat away those that choose to oppose him?"

"No," Lavenza admits.

"And neither do I," Elizabeth says brightly, and there's something almost alarming in her expression as she leans forward toward Lavenza. "So it's no good going around in circles, and we're free to talk about something more interesting."

Please no, Lavenza thinks. Please, can they have this conversation some other time. Or never. _Never_ would be a good time to talk about this.

"This is no typical relationship between an attendant of the Velvet Room and a guest," Elizabeth says, gesturing from Lavenza to Akira. "You have known each other for a long time."

"Not that long," Lavenza says.

"Not for us, maybe," Elizabeth says. "But for much of _his_ life."

This, at least, is true. Akira is not a child anymore. He's growing up into someone that can navigate--often with real consequences, admittedly--the complexities of not just his world but the metaverse as well. He is stronger than he had been when they met. He has been through a lot, especially in the past few months while Lavenza... while she had not been there for him the way that she should have been. She has seen him grow for much of his life.

"I've missed him," Lavenza admits. "I don't know how that could be possible, while I didn't even remember him. But I think that deep down, I did."

"Do you know what I think is interesting?" Elizabeth asks. "What _I_ think is interesting is that he has been carrying a part of you inside him. I wonder how that could have happened."

"So do I," Lavenza admits. "He is a thief, but I don't see how that's something he could have taken from me."

"No," Elizabeth says. She puts her head in one hand and _smiles_ at Lavenza. "It would have to have been given freely, wouldn't it?"

It would, Lavenza knows. And she does not... _remember_ how it had been given, but--

It must have happened, and while Lavenza is certainly planning to ask Akira for his version of how he had gotten a part of her, she's willing to accept for now that it had been given. "It's strange," she tells Elizabeth. "He's carried that piece of me for so long that it doesn't feel quite the same anymore."

"Maybe there's a little bit of him with you now," Elizabeth says.

"I don't know," Lavenza says. She puts a hand against her chest. "Maybe it _is_ a part of him. Maybe he has just... carried that part of me for so long that it remembers how it felt to be with him."

"To be with him," Elizabeth repeats, with the air of someone savoring the words as she says them. "I wonder if that might be something _you_ would like as well."

"To be with him?" Lavenza asks. "That is--I..." She flushes, and although her mouth opens and closes several times, she doesn't have the words to answer her sister. Her first, knee-jerk reaction to deny the question immediately, is rivalled only by the truth that this _is_ exactly what she wants.

He's the closest friend she's ever had outside her siblings. He is the _only_ friend she's ever had, outside her siblings. She likes spending time with him. She treasures the days she had gotten in Inaba, and she is caught somewhere between anger and despair over the fact that they will likely never get to spend time together in the Velvet Room. First she had been separated into two people that did not even know him, and now they are _all_ locked out. 

But she thinks that Elizabeth means something else by her question. And Lavenza's feelings on that particular subject are complicated. Not something she is at all ready to deal with so soon after everything that has happened today.

Luckily for her, the conversation is interrupted by Jose, who has been tinkering with something on his car, but comes over to the two of them now. There's a bright and almost contagious grin on his face. 

"Excuse me," he calls, stopping several feet away from the two of them. "But can I ask you a question?"

Lavenza is still not entirely sure where Jose had come from, what he's doing here, or how Elizabeth had found him. At the very least, however, it's hard to imagine him working with Yaldabaoth, so on the sliding scale of problems they have to deal with right now, Jose is somewhere near the bottom. "Of course," she says. "What is the question?"

He takes a few steps closer, apparently encouraged. "I was wondering... is this what all humans are like? Can you..." He seems a little embarrassed, but still eager to hear the answer. "Can you see through all of them?"

He points to Akira as he asks the question, and Lavenza has to pause to hide a smile before she can answer. She doesn't really want him to think she's laughing at him.

She's about to answer when Elizabeth nods. "Oh yes," she says. "Humans are _very_ strange."

"Elizabeth," Lavenza says. "Don't tell him that, he'll believe you."

"So you _can't_ usually see through them?" Jose asks, looking between the two sisters.

"No," Lavenza says firmly, over Elizabeth's _of course_. "He is... simply a very unusual person."

"I'm trying to learn more about them," Jose announces, with evident pride and enthusiasm. "Humans, I mean."

"Is that why you agreed to help my sister?" Lavenza asks.

Jose nods. "There are no other humans down here," he says. "That's why I was excited when she brought him back! I want to talk to him more."

"I'm sure he'll be happy to talk to you when he's awake again," Lavenza tells Jose. It's a promise she feels relatively safe in making, because she knows Akira, and she knows that he's the kind of person that wants to help others when and where he can. And she thinks he'll like Jose. There's something in his wide eyed enthusiasm at the idea of learning more about this world--so new and unknown to him--that reminds her of Akira's first excited trips into Inaba's TV World. 

"I hope so," Jose says, and then goes running off, apparently to tinker with something in his car. He occasionally pipes up with some little comment or other, but they seem mostly for his own benefit, and not something he expects an answer to. Lavenza lets the sound wash over her, as her attention drifts back down toward Akira. He's still sleeping, apparently peacefully, and Lavenza can't resist reaching down just to reassure herself that despite how translucent he looks, he _is_ still there. Still real, no more faded than he had been before. The sight of his closed eyes behind his mask, so still in sleep, makes her think of something they should probably discuss before he wakes up.

"Did you notice his eyes?" she asks Elizabeth softly. It's something she had seen almost immediately after her fusion, but--not something she had been sure she should mention to Akira himself until she's more sure of the cause.

"Of course," Elizabeth says. "I don't think that _he's_ realized, though."

"It's hard to see your own eyes," Lavenza points out. "I don't see... well, I don't see how he would have known."

"Well then I suppose we'll have to tell him," Elizabeth says.

"No," Lavenza says quickly. "No, let's... wait. The color may fade in time."

"Or it may not," Elizabeth says. "It may--"

"Shh," Lavenza says, as Akira starts to stir. He half opens his eyes, visibly confused for a few moments before the memory of what has happened recently comes back to him. Lavenza meets his gaze, taking in the sight of bright, golden eyes where before there had been gray.

(A part of her is scared, because she has no idea what this means for him)

(Another part, one that lives closer to her heart than her head, loves the feeling of being able to meet his gaze and see eyes like her own looking back at her)

The color does not seem to have faded at all, and Lavenza is not--despite what she'd said to Elizabeth--at all sure that it will. He has been through some very strange things recently. An ejection from the Velvet Room, a near death as he drifted, unformed, through the Sea of Souls. His part in helping Elizabeth to fuse Lavenza herselfback together. 

It's possible that he won't leave this place as exactly the same person he was when he came in. It's possible that he won't _ever_ be the same. That despite all of Jose's excitement at seeing a real human here in the depths of Mementos--Akira might not actually be entirely human anymore.

And a little weight of anxiety grows inside her. How much of himself is he going to have to lose because of what he's been through--in large part--for her?

Akira's bright, newly golden eyes meet Lavenza's own, and she watches his confusion fade as he realizes where he is and why. She reaches for his hand, stirred by some instinct she dares not look at too closely, and squeezes gently. She thinks she sees Akira smile slightly as his eyes close again, and he drifts back into sleep.

"That boy loves you, you know," Elizabeth says, almost conversationally.

"No," Lavenza says, because--no. Of course not. How could he? Why _would_ he?

Her sister doesn't answer, merely puts a hand on Lavenza's shoulder for a moment before standing and walking away, leaving Lavenza alone with her sleeping Trickster.

(She is so _confused_ )

-//-

_June 25_

_Afternoon_

_-//-_

When Yu gets to the hospital, the only ones there are Futaba, Morgana, and a middle aged man that Futaba points at and says, _that's Sojiro_ when Yu shoots a questioning look in her direction.

For some reason, it hasn't occurred to Yu that Akira's guardian will be here. Futaba had _mentioned_ him in the text she sent earlier, and he still hasn't spent any time at all thinking about how they're going to need to handle this extra complication.

"He doesn't know anything," Yu says in an undertone as Sojiro--who has been talking to someone that looks like a doctor--starts heading back toward them. "About the metaverse and all that, right?"

Futaba shakes her head. "He doesn't even know that I brought Mona with me," she tells him, pointing to the backpack at her feet where Morgana's head is just barely visible. "He doesn't know anything about all this stuff."

"Then I'll tell you what I think I figured out later," Yu says, just as Sojiro reaches them. Futaba gives him an absolutely agonized look, but obviously she understands why he's not going to just start talking about the metaverse while her guardian is within earshot, because she doesn't push. Sure, there are some things that they'll do now, with Akira apparently at death's door, that they wouldn't be willing to do under normal circumstances.

Explaining the suddenly cursed Velvet Room door that Yu had found in Shibuya isn't one of them. Yu hasn't even met Sojiro Sakura, and he doesn't want the man's first impression of him to be that he's insane.

(It would be so much easier if he _could_ just explain everything, though)

"Is this a friend of yours, Futaba?" Sojiro asks, giving Yu an appraising look.

"He's, uh--" Futaba looks between Sojiro and Yu, and seems uncertain what words she should use. "He's Akira's... cousin, or brother, or...?" 

"Ryotaro Dojima is my uncle," Yu says, jumping in with the roundabout explanation he's had to give so many times since he first met Akira. "I lived with him for a while when I was in high school, so I got a chance to know Akira pretty well." All of this is technically true, while also not even scratching the surface of their relationship.

"I let him know what happened with Akira this morning," Futaba adds. "They're really close, so I figured he'd want to be here."

"Oh," Sojiro says, and then seems to be at a loss for what else to say. Yu doesn't blame him. What _is_ there to say, when you meet someone for the first time in the waiting room of a hospital where someone you both care about is fighting for his life nearby? Yu doesn't know what to say either, if he's being honest.

"Did the doctor say anything?" Futaba asks Sojiro, as the awkward pause stretches out.

"What?" He shakes his head. "Oh. No, they were just telling me that they think they can get him stabilized, but that until they figure out exactly what caused all this, they're not optimistic about being able to actually help him."

"They can't do _anything_?" Futaba asks.

"He said they can get him stabilized," Yu points out. "That's not nothing." He's basically convinced that the newly chained up Velvet Room door has something to do with Akira's condition, but that doesn't mean he has any idea how to fix it yet. Making sure Akira stays alive long enough for the rest of them to get to the bottom of things in the metaverse is important.

"Exactly," Sojiro says, nodding at Yu. "And they only brought him in a few hours ago. It's still early, they'll figure something out."

Futaba does not look at all convinced that this is good enough. "Can we at least stay long enough for them to get him stabilized? So we'll be here in case something goes wrong?"

Sojiro agrees to this, and so the three of them--plus Morgana, who can't really do much, since cats are definitely not allowed in the hospital--settle in for the wait. There's not a lot of conversation, and Yu assumes that the other two are as preoccupied with worrying about Akira as he is.

"Everyone's asking if they can come too," Futaba announces eventually, holding up her phone to the rest of them.

"Everyone?" Sojiro asks.

"Mine and Akira's friends," Futaba says, which Yu assumes is probably the rest of the Phantom Thieves. 

"Oh geeze," Sojiro mutters. "Tell them not to bother--even we can't get in to actually see him, and it's not going to help anything to have a whole crowd of extra people running around in here."

"Sojiro..."

"There's no point in everyone coming out here," Sojiro tells her. "If they have to come somewhere, tell them to head to Leblanc after they get out of class. Akira should be stabilized by then, and we can head back and I'll make sure that everyone who wants to know what's going on can stay updated."

Futaba considers this, then nods and hunches over her phone, fingers flying over the screen.

Sojiro watches for a second, then looks at Yu, and adds, "If you want to tell your uncle and cousin, they can come wait at the cafe instead of up here. It'll be more comfortable after the trip into the city, too."

"I'll let them know," Yu says. "And thank you."

They sit around for a few hours that feel much longer. Yu makes awkward small talk with Sojiro, but mostly the three of them just sit in silence until a nurse comes to tell them that Akira's condition has stabilized as much as they're expecting it to, if there are any changes they'll alert Sojiro immediately, and that there's nothing else that can be done for now.

"Guess we might as well head back, then," Sojiro says. He rubs his face, looking exhausted. "Doesn't feel right leaving him here, but I guess there's not much else to do while the doctors are trying to figure this out."

It doesn't feel right, Yu has to agree. Whatever else is going on with Akira (and there is _definitely_ something else going on with Akira), he's still physically vulnerable, close to death and _alone_. There's a part of Yu that can't stop thinking that he should be with Akira right now--that it doesn't matter if Akira's not being allowed visitors, because if the situation was reversed, and Yu was in the hospital, Akira would have found a way to get to him.

But Yu isn't Akira. He's not. And there are other things they can be doing right now to help him, like figuring out what trouble Akira had managed to find in the Velvet Room that had been bad enough to put him in a real world coma. 

"Yu," Futaba whispers, as Sojiro starts walking. "What's going _on_?"

Yu hangs back, giving Sojiro some space to get ahead of them. When he's pretty sure they won't be overheard, he asks, "Akira explained the Velvet Room to you and the Thieves, right?"

"Yeah," Futaba says. "Why?"

"There's a door in Shibuya," Yu says. "I saw it on my way in today, and it's been..." he hesitates, then explains briefly the way it had looked before, and the sudden change it has gone through overnight. "I know that Akira dreams about it sometimes," he finishes. "And that it's not the kind of place where a dream is _just_ a dream. So if he got himself into some kind of trouble in there, I don't see why it couldn't have--hurt him, in the real world. It might be the kind of dream he wasn't able to wake up from."

Futaba stares at him for a second. Then she _laughs_ , and her whole posture sags in visible relief. "So he did something stupid and got himself in trouble," she says.

"I think so."

"He'd better wake up soon," Futaba says. "I'm going to kill him."

Yu decides to interpret this as an expression of how worried she is, and does not comment on it. Instead, he asks. "Should we go catch up with your guardian?"

"Yeah," Futaba says. "Are you coming back with us?"

"I'd like to," Yu says. "It sounds like that's where everyone's going to be for a while."

"Headquarters for 'Operation: Save Akira's Dumb Butt," Futaba says. "Yeah, that sounds about right. It's probably better to have everyone together right now."

"Just be careful what you talk about," Morgana says, carefully poking his head out from Futaba's bag. "Sojiro's going to be around too, remember."

"We know how to be careful," Futaba assures him. "Don't worry."

-//-

_June 25_

_Evening_

-//-

Leblanc stays closed that day, and it's _still_ the most crowded the cafe has ever been. By the time Futaba gets back from the hospital with Sojiro--and Yu--Yusuke is already waiting outside. Since Futaba has already told the rest of the Thieves what happened to Akira, she's more surprised by the fact that no one else has showed up than by the fact that Yusuke must have cut class to get here so early.

They come later though, and not even that much later. As soon as school ends for the day, Ann and Ryuji come from Shujin, to join Futaba, Yusuke, Morgana, and Yu huddled in one of the booths. Haru isn't with them, but Ann reports that she hadn't been in school either. Judging by the read receipts on the group chat, Futaba doesn't think she's even looked at her phone all day either. Of course, her dad has just died, so... she has other things to think about.

(In any other circumstances, Futaba would have been worried about it too. She would have been _horrified_ by what they've been careless enough to let happen in that Palace)

(But... Akira)

And then come Dojima and Nanako, late in the evening and at the whims of a train system that just doesn't have that many connections coming out of Inaba. Futaba has only met Dojima the one time, but she thinks he looks ashen today, paler than he'd been that first time. Nanako doesn't bother hiding how upset _she_ is, and squeezes into the crowded booth with the rest of the Thieves while Dojima and Sojiro have a conversation by the counter.

"So it's something from the metaverse?" Ann asks quietly. "I mean, it's _really_ not just... something making him sick or something like that?"

"It's still possible that he's sick," Yu says. "But I think it's a lot more likely that it's the metaverse."

Futaba half turns to see if either of the adults are listening, but they're completely absorbed in their own conversation. She ignores them and leans over the table. "So if it's something in the metaverse," she almost-whispers. "Does that mean there's something we can do to help him?"

"The only thing is that I don't even know where to start figuring it out," Yu says, dropping his own voice as well. "It's probably something to do with the Velvet Room--"

(Futaba is still skeptically unsure of how _exactly_ this Velvet Room works, but she can at least get behind the idea that it's something powerful and important that both Akira and Yu are deeply invested in)

"But that's been sealed," Yu continues. "And I'm not sure where else to start. Because..." He sighs, looking honestly exhausted. "The way things are set up here, with Palaces all over the place, there's just too many ways into the metaverse. I don't know which one is most likely to lead to helping Akira."

"Mementos," Nanako says immediately. "Right?"

"It _is_ everyone's Palace," Morgana agrees. "I don't think there's any place that would be better to start with."

"Okay," Ryuji says. "Sure, but--I mean, how are we supposed to get in without the app?"

Sudden and immediate silence around the table.

Then Futaba says, "What?"

"It's not just us, is it?" Ann asks, looking aroun the table and suddenly nervous. "Ryuji and I noticed it during lunch today, but I thought everyone would have seen by now."

"Seen what?" Yusuke asks.

"The nav's gone, dude," Ryuji says, picking up his phone and tilting it toward Yusuke.

Futaba dives for her own phone, and she's not the only one. She swipes through several screens until she finds the folder where she'd hidden the metanav, keeping it safely out of sight of anyone that might, for any reason, get a look at her phone.

It's not there. Gone, as if it had never existed. Futaba looks up from her phone, and shares a look with Yusuke, who happens to be sitting directly opposite her and looks as shocked as she feels.

Something had happened to Akira, and to the mysterious Velvet Room, and now to the app that is their only way back into the metaverse. It--her mind races--well, it's not their _only_ way in, right? There's the TVs in Inaba, apparently, and Morgana can get in and out of Palaces just on his own. Can they use that in some way? If they give him one of their phones, can he maybe take it into the metaverse, get the nav back on it, and--

"I still have it," Yu says.

Four words, and all of Futaba's mental calculations screech immediately to a stop.

"Let me see!" Nanako says, and leans over without waiting for an answer to get a look at her cousin's phone. Futaba, who is too far from Yu to get a look for herself, but who is busy connecting dots inside her head, gasps out loud. 

"There's two versions of the app!" she says excitedly. "There's the one with the eye that we all have--had--and then there's the butterfly version. Yu's the only one here with that one, so--" So that would be a perfectly reasonable explanation for why they've all lost the app and they haven't, right? She hadn't been able to find any differences between the two, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. It just means that none of them are things that can be picked up by her computers or scanners. 

"So we can still get in," Ann says, looking much more excited. "We can probably even get the app back onto our phones, right? This other version?"

"I don't see why not," Futaba says. "We just need to go in with Yu, like we all went in with Akira."

"I wonder if the app disappearing has something to do with what happened to Akira," Yusuke muses.

"Gotta be," Futaba says. "Right? Otherwise that's a huge coincidence."

"It makes sense," Yu agrees, turning his phone over and over in his hands. "Whatever happened to the eye version of the app, I'm pretty sure that the butterfly app came from a friend of Akira's."

"There's no way Akira would have done something to make Lavenza mad enough to put him in a coma," Yusuke says firmly. "That's who you were talking about, right?"

Yu nods. "And the other version must have come from whoever put him in the coma," he says. "The imposter Igor, I guess."

Akira has mentioned the whole Igor thing in his explanation, but not in enough detail to really satisfy Futaba. She puts this on her mental list of things they're really going to need answers about sometime soon.

"Whoever hurt Akira is trying to stop us from going in after him," Ryuji says, cutting right to the most important part of Yu's explanation. He looks pissed, and for once Futaba actually _likes_ the fact that he looks pissed. There are definitely times when she thinks he's too hot-headed, but a part of her wants to cheer him on now. Because screw whoever it is that's hurting Akira and taking the app from them. They really think the Thieves aren't going to fight back? Have they been paying attention at all?

"Do you think we can go into Mementos today?" Ann asks.

"With those two hanging around?" Morgana asks, twitching his tail in the direction of Sojiro and Dojima. "I don't think it's going to be that easy to explain why we're all running out of here while Akira's in the hospital."

"Dad would be okay with it," Nanako says. "He didn't mind us going into the TV World back home."

"D'you think he might cover for us, then?" Ryuji asks.

Futaba sneaks another glance back at the two adults, and catches Dojima as he happens to be looking back at her. She quickly looks away, like she's been caught doing something wrong. There's something about the expression on his face that makes her feel vaguely uncomfortable--she knows he's a cop, maybe that's it. "I don't know about that," she mutters to the rest of the table. "He doesn't look too happy."

"He always looks like that," Nanako assures her.

"We should probably try going tomorrow instead of today, anyway," Yusuke says. "Because we _should_ find a way to tell Haru what's going on before we make any decisions, and we also need to address the Akechi problem."

"Poor Haru," Nanako says, apparently to herself. "We saw what happened to her dad on the news last night. She seems really nice...."

Yu puts his arm around her shoulders and squeezes in a little hug.

"We all definitely agree Akechi did something to Okumura," Futaba says. "Right? I mean--we _knew_ he was doing something, and we still..."

"Maybe we should have been faster," Ann says.

"Or confronted him earlier," Ryuji adds. "He completely played us."

"What happened in that Palace, exactly?" Nanako asks tentatively.

Futaba explains, as best she can. That they'd been trying to figure out what was going on with Akechi. That things had gotten complicated after Haru was pulled into the group, and they'd tried to rush through the Palace before he could get to whatever his goal was--

And they just hadn't been fast enough.

A heavy silence falls over the table, and Futaba _really_ wishes Akira was here. He'd have been as devastated as all the rest of them, but she knows he'd have been able to figure out what they're supposed to do next. Instead, the Thieves are all just kind of... lost.

"Alright," Yu says, just as Futaba starts to think that no one's going to say anything at all. "So what we know is that something involving Akira and involving the metaverse happened last night. We know that one version of the metanav is gone, and that our best bet at figuring out how to help Akira is using the other one to go into Mementos. I don't want to step on anyone's toes if you all don't want me here, but I'd like to come with you when you do that Not just so you can all get the app, but after that. I need to do something to help Akira."

"Me too," Nanako says immediately.

"I don't have any problem with that," Yusuke says, and Futaba shrugs.

"We need to be able to fight," she says. "And you can do that same thing Akira can, with all the extra Persona. Plus you _are_ the only one here with the working app, so...."

The rest of the Thieves all nod--there's no disagreement or even any real discussion, which Futaba figures either means that they're all too tired and depressed to argue, or that they're all _desperate_ for a way to get into Mementos and hopefully help Akira.

"Okay," Futaba says. "So... so the plan is that we'll talk to Haru tomorrow, and we'll all figure out a way to meet up in Mementos after that?"

No one has any other suggestions, so after a while, as it gets later and the time to catch the last train of the night gets closer, the other Thieves make their way home. Futaba's wondering if she should head back to the house or stick around the cafe for a while, when Dojima corners her near the stairs.

"Do you mind showing me where Akira's been staying?" he asks.

"Huh?" She's been spacing, but it would kind of make sense that he'd want to see Akira's room. He's basically Akira's dad, right? "Sure," Futaba says. "It's right up this way." She points, then goes up ahead of him, her heavy boots thudding against each step as she walks. 

"He's really made himself at home here," Dojima observes when he gets to the top, looking around.

"Yeah," Futaba says. "It was nice having him around."

She hears the words as they come out of her mouth, and regrets them immediately. "I mean--not _was_. It's--it _is_ nice having him around." She can't believe she'd said that, even as an accident, because it's only been one day. One day, and he's coming back! He's going to get better, because he has to, because they're going to help him and because he's just too stubborn to die like this.

"It's alright to be worried," Dojima tells her, as Futaba turns toward Akira's bed and scrubs a fist across her suddenly watering eyes. "We're all scared."

"Yeah," Futaba says. Her voice shakes. "But he's going to be okay--I don't know if Yu or Nanako told you, but we think that something just happened to Akira in the metaverse. And if that's true, then... then he'll be fine, and he'll get better. He'll come back."

"Yu sort of explained," Dojima says. "He knows better than to go into too much detail with me, he knows I can never follow what you all do with those Shadows and everything. But I know what the potential consequences are." His expression is serious, and his gaze doesn't waver from Futaba's face, no matter how hard she tries to look away. She remembers that he's a cop, and wonders why she's suddenly under interrogation. Abruptly, he asks, "Did you know that Nanako died when she was in the first grade?"

" _What_?"

"It was only for a minute or two," Dojima says. "The doctors were able to resuscitate her. She was already in the hospital, she had been for a while. Sick, because of the time she spent trapped inside a TV."

Futaba hadn't known any of this. Akira had told her once that he and Nanako were kidnapped by the same person that was going around Inaba throwing people into TVs, but he'd skated over the apparently dire consequences. She hadn't known that Nanako had actually died, even if it had only been for a couple of minutes. 

"I'm sorry," she says. "I--"

"I didn't tell you that so that you would be sorry," Dojima tells her. "I'm telling you because there's a very specific..." he pauses. Chooses the right word. "Burden," he says at last. "There's a specific burden to being guardian to people like Akira or Yu."

Futaba isn't sure whether he means especially them because they've both been leaders, or because they're both wild cards, or just--just because they're the ones that Dojima feels responsible for. Either way, Futaba can tell by the intensity of his expression that this is important to him. If she'd had any doubt that he's fully on board with what Akira (and Yu, and Nanako) do in the metaverse, that he's not just watching from a distance but that he _actually cares_ , those doubts gone now.

"I guess it's not that easy taking care of them?" Futaba says, not really sure what she's supposed to say here. "It probably all seems pretty crazy if you're just watching them run around and hearing about Shadows and everything after it's all over."

"The only thing that could be worse is not knowing what's going on at all," Dojima says.

Futaba has the feeling he's trying to say something specific. She's not quite getting it though, and just gives him a weird, sideways squinting look out of the corner of her eye, as several beats of uncomfortable silence stretch out between them.

"Do you trust your guardian?" Dojima asks aburptly.

" _Sojiro_?" Futaba asks. "Of course I trust him, why do you ask?"

"Because whether I like it or not," Dojima says. "He is also Akira's guardian for at least the rest of the school year. He's Akira's guardian _right now,_ and he's going to have to make medical decisions for someone that has apparently been hurt by Shadows or one of those impossible things. And it's about time he knows what's really going on here so that he can make the informed decisions that he needs to."

"But I can't just _tell Sojiro_ ," Futaba protests. "I can't just tell him! He'd know about the Phantom Thieves, and he'd know about Okumura, and he'd..." She looks down at the floor and doesn't finish the sentence. She doesn't know Dojima well enough to admit out loud to him that she's terrified of the fact that Sojiro is going to be disappointed in what they've been doing.

(A few days ago, she might not have been so viscerally against the idea of telling him)

(Then again, a few days ago they hadn't accidentally let their friend's dad be murdered because they were too stupid to stop Akechi when they had the chance)

"Okumura's death would be a complicating factor," Dojima admits. "What can you tell me about that?"

She's already had to explain it once today, and so it should be easier to get the words out the second time. It's not, though. It is way harder to tell this stern faced adult that they'd thought they could use the Palace to learn more about Akechi, than it had been to tell Yu and Nanako.

He asks questions, as she explains. They're good questions, and honestly Futaba has already spent so much time rerunning this over and over in her head that she's asked _herself_ most of them, but that doesn't make it any easier to face giving those answers to someone else. So Futaba is... tired, when they finally finish. Maybe it's a bad idea, she thinks even as she keeps talking, to be confessing all the ways the Phantom Thieves have messed up to this cop.

Except that Nanako is his daughter, and Akira is part of his family, and Yu had (apparently) done things just as weird when he was in high school. Whatever else Dojima does, he's not going to sell them out like most other cops would.

(...except for maybe to Sojiro)

"Well," Dojima says at last.

"I know," Futaba says. "It's really bad. Things got--really out of control." 

Dojima shakes his head. "I'm not going to tell you that everything turned out for the best," he says. "You already know that it didn't."

Futaba nods. She does know that, absolutely.

"But it's worth remembering that someone else made the choice to hurt Okumura while you were trying to help. And I believe that you all did everything you could."

"Just like that?" Futaba asks. "Someone died, and you just... believe we did the right thing? Just like that?"

"I've known Akira for a long time," Dojima tells her. "And he can be an amazingly stupid kid about some things."

Futaba laughs, startled, and for a second Dojima smiles too. Then it fades back into his previous serious expression. "But he knows about things like this," he says. "And he's not going to fight unless he knows he's on the right side."

"You know him really well," Futaba says.

"I'd hope so," Dojima says. "After five years."

Futaba looks away from him, her gaze straying over the rest of Akira's room. It's easy to feel him here--after only a few months, he's settled into the space so well that she can close her eyes now and imagine he's _still_ here. Not lying in the hospital, probably hooked up to all kinds of beeping machines, maybe even dying. And now the guy who had basically raised him is standing a few feet away, an adult that knows all about Akira's fights in the metaverse and all about his weird, trouble making habits. 

And he'd come up here to tell her that really, it would be a good thing if Sojiro knew about the Phantom Thieves too.

"Do you really think it would be better to tell Sojiro?" Futaba asks.

"Yes."

She nods. He probably has the best perspective on this really, because... well, because he's the only other one that's looking in on all this from the outside, as like--as a parent. Futaba knows that Sojiro _does_ care about Akira. He might not have wanted him around, but Akira's been here all of like _three months_ , and he's already changed everything.

Part of her wishes Akira was here to help make this decision. If Dojima is making the wrong choice here, then everything Futaba has come to love about her life here in the past few months is about to be taken away.

But it wouldn't be Dojima making the wrong choices, would it? He's standing here telling her that it might be helpful for Akira to have his legal, court-appointed guardian actually be able to understand what's going on with him. He's asking _her_ if Sojiro is someone they can trust. It wouldn't be Dojima making the wrong choice, it would be _her_. And Futaba doesn't really think--not deep down--that trusting Sojiro is ever going to be the wrong choice.

"But _only_ Sojiro," she tells Dojima. "We can't tell anyone else's parents. I mean, Akira's the only one in the hospital, plus Yusuke doesn't have anyone since Madarame got arrested, and Ann's parents travel a lot, and Ryuji only has his mom at home and he talks about how he doesn't want her to worry about what he's doing, and Haru--"

Her throat closes up around the words.

Haru's dad is dead.

"So... so we can just tell Sojiro," Futaba says. "And that's it."

-//-

_June 25_

_Evening_

-//-

Dojima hadn't exactly been expecting to be the one to sit Sojiro Sakura down and explain to him about the Phantom Thieves, but Futaba had been so visibly nervous about the whole thing that he'd taken pity on her. He'd offered to have the conversation himself, saying that it might sound a little bit less fantastic coming from an adult, and she'd pretended to buy the less than impressive explanation. Dojima thinks she'd been grateful, which--well, she seems like a good kid, and she's apparently gotten close to both Akira and Nanako, so he doesn't mind helping her out.

Or at least he hadn't, until just now. Futaba has gone home, taking Nanako and even the cat (who is apparently _not_ a cat) with her, so that Dojima can have his conversation with Sojiro in private. 

"It's been a long day," Sojiro observes, as Dojima sits at the counter and tries to figure out how to start this conversation. It needs to be done, he firmly believes that Sojiro _needs_ to know what is really happening to Akira so that he can make the right decisions about what happens to him while he's in his coma.

But damn if it's not hard to talk about.

"It's getting late," Sojiro observes, looking up at the clock. "I know it's not much, but if you want to stay up in the attic overnight, you're welcome to it. And I'll talk to Futaba about having Nanako stay over with her again."

Dojima nods in answer. He has, actually, been so caught up with worries about Akira and in the details of how exactly to break the Phantom Thief news to Sojiro that he hasn't even considered where they're going to stay tonight. "Thanks," he says. "And I hate to return the favor by giving you some bad news, but there's something you need to know about Akira." He hesitates, but there's really no turning back now. "And about your kid, too."

Sojiro eyes him from the other side of the counter. There's no way that he can possibly know what's coming, but from his expression he seems to have some idea that he's not going to like it. "Does this have anything to do with where they're always running off to after he gets out of school?"

"Yeah," Dojima says. "And look, I'm telling you all this even though you're probably going to think it's nuts, but you're the one that the doctors are going to be coming to when they need to talk to someone about Akira's treatment. So whatever you think about all this, there are certain things you need to know."

"This had better not be about drugs," Sojiro says. "If _that's_ what they've been leaving the house to do every day--"

"No," Dojima says quickly. "No, it doesn't have anything to do with drugs." 

"I can't guess what else it might be, then," Sojiro says.

And here it is. The moment that Dojima has been trying to put off for as long as possible. He's run out of time to figure out a way to explain that the kids are fighting monsters in another dimension without sounding insane.

Well, maybe there's no way to avoid it.

"They've been fighting monsters in another dimension," he explains, opting for directness in the last moment because he's not sure how else to start. "It's something Akira's been doing since he was in grade school, and he's kept doing it once he was sent here."

Sojiro stares at him for several long seconds, eyebrows slowly creeping upward on his forehead. Finally, after several seconds of silence, he says, "I'm going to need a few more details."

"That's more than fair," Dojima says. "I know exactly how it sounds, but at least hear me out."

He doesn't tell Sojiro everything. He doesn't know everything, for one thing, and doesn't completely understand everything that he _does_ know. After five years, he's come to the conclusion that there are some parts of all this that he's just never going to quite get--he's too much on the outside of it all. He's never going to understand these Shadows the way the kids do.

But he tells Sojiro the parts that he _does_ understand, and the parts that Sojiro needs--as Akira's guardian--to know. He explains what had happened in Inaba five years ago, and that he'd watched a twelve year old Akira fighting Shadows alone as they threatened to overrun the town, doing something that no one else was able to do. He talks about the time Nanako had been pulled out of the TV World and ended up in the hospital for weeks, and how it had felt to _wait_. And then finally he gets to the Phantom Thieves, and the new group of kids that has been stealing Treasures from Palaces and changing hearts. 

It shouldn't be the kind of story that anyone in the world would believe, but the more Dojima talks, the more he can see Sojiro moving from outright denial, into skepticism, and into a kind of grudging _but what if it's actually true_ semi-acceptance.

"You're right," Sojiro says eventually. "It does sound crazy."

"I didn't always believe it myself," Dojima says. "But I've seen some things that are pretty much impossible to doubt."

"Yeah," Sojiro says. He drums his fingers against the counter, gaze distant as he thinks. "So you've said."

Dojima lets him think in silence for several minutes. Finally, he asks, "What does this have to do with Akira's hospitalization? You think it's the same thing as what happened to your daughter?"

"It's crossed my mind," Dojima says. "Although my nephew seems to think the cause is something different."

"Your nephew," Sojiro repeats. "That quiet kid that came to the hospital today?"

"Yu," Dojima agrees. Although he's not so much of a kid anymore, is he? "Yeah."

Sojiro seems to think this is funny, for some reason. "You know," he says. "I can sort of believe that someone like Akira could get caught up in--everything you've just told me about. I can believe he got Futaba mixed up in it too, and I can even believe that group they're always hanging around with are actually the Phantom Thieves."

Dojima nods with a shrug. 

"But your nephew seemed so normal."

"You can say that because you've never had to break up an argument about who used the last of the vending machine sodas," Dojima says wryly. 

Sojiro raises his eyebrows.

"Apparently it works as some kind of healing in that other world," Dojima says. And he's heard so much more about it than he'd ever wanted to, in the last few months of Yu's stay in Inaba.

He sighs. "What I'm trying to say," he tells Sojiro. "Is that Yu tells me that what happened to Akira is somehow related to all this. And I believe him, which is why it was--" 

(Worth the risk) 

"Time to tell you," he says firmly. "The kids would have kept it a secret forever, I'm pretty sure, but Akira might be--" This kid, who is as much a part of his family as Nanako at this point, who Dojima has watched grow from a kid to a teenager, who might not get the chance to ever get any older. "He might be dying. And I know the kids are probably going to be trying something with their Persona and whatever else, to see if they can help him. Maybe they'll be able to get things figured out and it'll all be fine. Or maybe they'll need some real world help with whatever they have to do. I don't know yet, and neither do they. But I need to do whatever I can to help, and in my opinion... telling you is a part of that."

Akira needs someone in his corner. He needs someone who can do what Dojima _can't_ right now, because Dojima is not his legal guardian.

Sojiro is.

The other man sighs, deeply, and Dojima stands up. "I know it's a lot," he says. "And if you have questions, the kids are probably the best ones to ask." He's just about reached the limit of what he knows. 

"I think I might just have to do that," Sojiro says, and as his eyes go distant and thoughtful, Dojima takes this as his cue to leave.

(He desperately hopes that this is the right choice)

-//-

About an hour later, Futaba hears the front door open, and looks up from where she's been waiting on the couch for Sojiro to come home. He's later than usual, but it's been a weird day, and she knows that Dojima has probably just been telling him.

Nanako (and Morgana) are already asleep, so it's just Futaba sitting and watching as Sojiro comes in and then stops on the other side of the room, looking tired.

Sojiro studies her for a few seconds, and Futaba has the feeling that she's being in some way reassessed. Makes sense, right? Sojiro knows about the Phantom Thieves now. Whatever else happens, he's... he's going to see her differently, and probably Akira too. She sits up a little straighter, and hopes-- _really_ hopes--that he's not disappointed in her.

"There's this... story that's been on the news the past couple days," Sojiro says eventually. "About Kunikazu Okumura and the Phantom Thieves."

Futaba nods. "We didn't kill him," she says. "There was someone else there with us. We knew he was there, but we didn't know what he wanted we just knew it was _bad_." She doesn't know how much Dojima has actually been able to explain, so maybe none of this is even making sense to him, but she needs to get it out. Futaba goes on, the words tumbling out of her now that she doesn't have to keep it all a secret. "We tried so hard to get through the Palace fast, Akira was really worried because we just didn't _know_ what he was going to do, and--" Poor Haru. "And we knew changing his heart was going to destroy his Palace so that nothing bad could happen, but we just weren't fast enough."

Sojiro at least listens to all of this, and when Futaba has finally run out of words, he comes over to the couch and sits down next to her.

"I have," he says, after what feels like seriously _forever_. "No words for... any of the things I've been told tonight."

"Yeah," Futaba says. She stares at her toes. "It's all--it's really weird. But it's not as crazy as it sounds. It you look at Mom's research--"

"I know," Sojiro says. "I'm not going to pretend I understand Wakaba's work as well as you do, but there are parts of all this that sound a little familiar."

Futaba relaxes slightly. "Yeah," she says. "She pretty much figured it out, she was just--just a _little_ bit off. Maybe if she'd had more time, she would have gotten the rest of the way there."

"And maybe," Sojiro says. "That would have been dangerous for her. Just like maybe it's dangerous for you kids."

"It's definitely dangerous for us," Futaba says immediately. It's impossible to say anything else, Sojiro _knows_ Akira is in the hospital right this second fighting for his life, and anything else just isn't going to fly. "But that doesn't mean we're going to stop."

She feels Sojiro put his hand, almost tentatively, on her shoulder. She leans into the touch, reassured by the feeling that... that he's not going to be mad about this. Or at least not so mad that he's going to push her away.

They sit on the couch, in the middle of that dark room, for a very long time. Eventually Futaba falls asleep there, leaning against him, and it's one of the best night's sleep she can remember having in a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are sooooo many things that I needed to write about what's going on in the real world right now, but all I want to do is to help Akira and Lavenza get themselves figured out while Elizabeth eats popcorn in the corner.
> 
> Also, dear God, I can't believe we're now on the third chapter of June 25th. Go to _sleep_ , everyone, you can be traumatized some more when you wake up on the 26th.


	32. June 26 - July 9

_June 26_

_Afternoon_

-//-

The day after Akira is hospitalized, Yu wakes up early and heads to Yongen-Jaya. It's quiet here, in this neighborhood, at this time of the day, and when Yu gets to Leblanc, he finds Futaba, Nanako, and Morgana already there with Sojiro.

"It's just Yu," Morgana announces to the other three, as whatever conversation they're having abruptly stops.

"Hi guys," Yu says, ignoring the _just Yu_ comment so he won't look crazy talking to Morgana in front of Sojiro. "Where's Dojima?"

"Dad had to talk to someone from work," Nanako says. "I think he went outside somewhere to make his call. Did _you_ know he was going to tell Sojiro about the metaverse?"

Yu stares at her. For several seconds, he has absolutely no idea how to reply.

"We had quite the conversation last night," Sojiro says dryly. 

"Well," Yu says, a little weakly. "That's--" Sojiro's expression gives away absolutely nothing, but since he hasn't kicked everyone out and called the police or anything like that, Yu figures that... maybe he isn't _that_ angry about it? "That's good?"

"I think so," Futaba says, and Yu gets a _much_ better read off her than he'd gotten from Sojiro. She looks--well, as happy as he'd have expected her to be able to look, given the circumstances. So probably things had gone okay with Sojiro last night after all. "I guess your uncle thinks Sojiro needs to know, since he's Akira's legal guardian, and Akira's--you know. In the ICU and everything."

Yu nods--this is probably a good point. He's just a little surprised that his uncle had actually gone ahead and done that.

"I'm also told that you're the one that's been doing this the longest," Sojiro says. "Futaba says you're the one to go to with questions."

"Futaba just doesn't want to have to answer any questions herself," Morgana informs Yu.

"Shh," Futaba says, and bops him on the head.

Yu shakes his head, still too busy processing this to figure out what to say. "Akira is going to completely freak out when he wakes up," he says.

"Akira's going to think it's awesome," Nanako says. "You never saw what it was like for him when he was still keeping the TV World secret from you, but he was stressed out a _lot_. And then when you and Dad found out, he was so much happier." She shrugs. "I think he likes it when the people he cares about know what's really going on."

"I think you're probably right," Yu admits. He risks a look at Sojiro, who is now wearing an expression that Yu has seen many times on his uncle's face--an _I don't fully understand what's happening here and I don't think that I want to_ look.

"We were just talking about whether we could bring Sojiro into Mementos with us," Morgana announces.

"Why, exactly?" Yu asks.

"So we don't have to keep translating everything Morgana says for him," Futaba says.

Sojiro gives Morgana a look that implies that while he has accepted the existence of alternate dimensions and Shadows, but he has not quite wrapped his head around the idea that the cat standing on his counter is actually talking.

"I don't see why that wouldn't work?" Yu says, with some reluctance. "But we should probably go in without him today. We need some more information about what's going on in the metaverse before we risk bringing in anyone that can't fight."

"I'm not looking to get involved in this," Sojiro says. "I just want to be able to know what the cat's saying in case anything like what happens yesterday morning happens again."

"Oh yeah," Futaba mutters. "Morgana was the one that realized Akira wasn't waking up, and he couldn't tell you."

Yu had been half thinking of excuses to keep Sojiro out of Mementos, but this explanation pulls him up short. "Yeah," he says. "We'll take you when we have a chance."

Sojiro nods. "Appreciate it," he says.

Yu takes a deep breath. "So," he says. "We should probably focus on getting everyone coordinated for the Mementos trip today. Have you talked to anyone yet, Futaba?"

"I was about to start a new group chat," Futaba says. "Hang on, I'm including you on it."

And sure enough, it's barely thirty seconds later--just long enough for Yu to join the rest of the group at the counter, and for Sojiro to offer him a cup of coffee--that his phone buzzes with a new text.

And then immediately after that, the messages start flooding in.

> **Operation Save Akira's Dumb Butt**
> 
> **Futaba:** When's everyone going to be free to go into Mementos?
> 
> **Yusuke:** Futaba, you are no longer allowed to name group texts
> 
> **Yusuke:** This is the pre-Phantom Thieves group chat all over again
> 
> **Futaba:** I didn't see you coming up with anything better!

"Maybe this is a conversation to have another time?" Yu points out, laying his phone down on the counter and leaning forward so he can look past Nanako and make eye contact with Futaba, who is currently sputtering with outrage in response to Yusuke's text.

"You don't understand," Futaba protests. "Me and Akira and Yusuke spent _so long_ trying to come up with a cool group name before we joined up with everyone else, it's very important that everyone knows it wasn't just my fault."

"You guys told us that you _did_ have a cool name," Morgana says.

"Well obviously we lied!" Futaba says. "You guys had the _Phantom Thieves_ , and we were using--I think it was just 'Team' at that point?" She grabs her phone, scrolls through it for a second, then shakes her head. "No, hang on, it was Team Leblanc."

"That's not a bad name," Sojiro says. Futaba apparently doesn't hear him.

"But before _that_ ," she says. "We were just using 'Team,' and before that it was 'Team If You Don't Like it You Can Come Up With a Better One,' and 'Team Metaverse'--"

"Wow," Morgana says, sitting down and wrapping his tail around all four paws. "You guys are really lucky you found us."

"Focus, please," Yu says.

Nanako puts her hands over her mouth in a move that really doesn't hide her laughter whatsoever. Yu sighs and picks his phone back up to try and get the group chat back on track.

> **Operation Save Akira's Dumb Butt**
> 
> Seriously though, when is everybody free?
> 
> **Ann:** I want to try and go by Haru's apartment this morning first. She hasn't been answering anyone's texts so I don't know if she even knows about Akira
> 
> **Ann:** She might not want to work with us anymore after what happened to her dad, but I still want to talk to her :(
> 
> **Futaba:** Good luck Ann. Tell us how it goes? And tell us if you OR Haru need any help
> 
> **Ann:** For sure!
> 
> **Ann:** (And Haru, I know you're on this chat, so if you see this before I come by, we love you and we hope you're doing okay <3)
> 
> **Yusuke:** I'm available any time. I can be there in twenty minutes
> 
> I think it's going to take Ann a little bit longer to try and talk to Haru
> 
> **Ann:** Yeah, she lives nowhere near me. Maybe 11:00? It'll give Ryuji a chance to wake up too
> 
> **Ryuji:** Hey, I'm awake
> 
> **Ryuji:** Could barely sleep at all last night, thinking about everything
> 
> So 11:00's good?
> 
> **Ryuji:** I'll be there at 10:30! 
> 
> **Futaba:** He'll be there at 11:00
> 
> **Ryuji:** HEY
> 
> **Futaba:** If we're lucky
> 
> **Nanako:** Is anyone from the Investigation Team coming, Yu?

"I'm sitting right next to you," Yu says, nudging his cousin. "You could just ask."

She sticks out her tongue. "Yeah, but then everyone else would be out of the loop."

Which is a fair point, so even though Yu feels pretty silly texting her back when they are literally sitting next to each other, he does.

> **Operation Save Akira's Dumb Butt**
> 
> I don't think we need that many people just to do recon
> 
> I did ask Rise to meet us there, because I'm hoping three navigators working together will be able to find some clue to what happened to Akira
> 
> **Futaba:** We got this ;)
> 
> **Nanako:** Yeah!

And the two of them high five, Nanako giggling again.

Yu looks to Sojiro. "Any update from the hospital about Akira this morning?" he asks.

The questions makes the girls go quiet immediately. Morgana looks up at Sojiro too, all four of them waiting for an answer.

"You think I wouldn't have said anything if I had news?" Sojiro asks. "No. Nothing yet."

Futaba makes a face, and hops down from her seat. "Do you guys want to head over to Shibuya?" she asks. 

"We still have two hours before we're supposed to be there," Yu says.

"I know," Futaba says. "But I don't want to just... sit around."

"We can pick up supplies or something," Nanako suggests. 

"Good idea," Futaba says. "I have _no_ idea where Akira hides his stuff."

"I do," Morgana says. "I can show you if you want to grab some of it."

"No," Yu says. "Let's not--he's in the hospital. We shouldn't be going through his stuff."

"He has bead chains," Morgana says.

Yu hesitates.

" _And_ he's been hoarding chewing souls."

He gives in. "Okay," he says. "But--not all of it."

"He's going to be _so_ mad when he wakes up and sees you went through his stuff," Nanako says.

"Just like old times," Yu says.

"If Akira didn't want us to take his stuff, he shouldn't have gotten himself into a coma," Futaba says. "Come on, we'll raid his healing items and then go get whatever else we need."

-//-

The three of them go upstairs together, and Sojiro hears several minutes of conversation mixed with emphatic meowing, then they're all back downstairs and rushing out of the cafe.

Sojiro watches them go, an anxiety in the pit of his stomach that is entirely unlike anything he's felt before. He knows that they're running off to battle now, and even if he _has_ been persuaded that it's both important and something that only they can do, he's still worried.

"Do you get used to it?" he asks Dojima, when the other man comes back inside from whatever phone call he'd had to make.

"Never."

-//-

_June 26_

_Morning_

-//-

The two days since her father's death have been something of a blur for Haru. She's alternated between accepting visits from her father's coworkers, all of whom are scrambling to chart the future of Okumura Foods, and curling up in her bed and wishing she never has to get up again.

She barely even thinks of the Phantom Thieves until Sunday morning, when Ann knocks at her front door.

"Oh no," Haru says, when she's fought down her instinctive desire to shout through the door at whoever's there that she can't _handle_ talking to anyone at all right now. "Ann, I'm so sorry, I haven't said anything to anyone since the press conference. I've just--I let my phone die so I wouldn't have to hear what anyone was saying, and--"

"It's okay, Haru," Ann says quickly. "And we really wanted to give you space and everything, but..." She twists her hands nervously around the strap of her bag. "Something happened."

"After my father?" Haru asks.

Ann nods. "Akira's in the hospital. He... well, we don't really know what happened to him _exactly_ , but yesterday I guess he just wouldn't wake up?"

"Oh no," Haru breathes. It should be impossible for this news of a friend's illness to hurt right now, while she is still reeling from everything that had happened to her father. She's known Akira for mere weeks, and this bad news should be just a drop in the ocean of her grief.

Apparently that's not how feelings work, because Haru is horrified by what Ann's telling her.

"Now we're pretty sure that it has something to do with the metaverse," Ann says. "So we were all going to meet at Mementos and see if we can get a clue to what happened to him. I know you're going through a lot right now, so we'd totally understand if you don't want--"

"I want to come," Haru says immediately. She turns and hurries back inside to grab her things, gesturing for Ann to follow her. 

"Are you sure?" Ann asks as she trails after her. "I know this must be the last thing you want to have to worry about right now."

Haru shakes her head. "That's not right," she says, as she pulls her phone out from where she'd hidden it when she couldn't stand to hear from the outside world anymore. She plugs it in, then goes to get the rest of what she'll need. "I couldn't do anything for my father after he collapsed," she says. "And I can't do anything for him now except sit around at home and cry about it. And I... I don't want to do that anymore. If I can help Akira instead of sitting here, I would much rather do that."

Her phone has enough power now that Haru can turn it on and watch messages come through. There are a lot of them, many from people that she isn't ready to talk to yet. But there's a flood from the Phantom Thieves too, and a few messages from Makoto that start out worried and horrified, and end in concern, and with a promise to listen if and when Haru is ready to talk.

She pauses for a second, lingering over all the messages of concern. She's never had friends like this before, and while she's _devastated_ that it would take her father's death for her to see how real these new friends are, she's glad to have them all here.

"Haru," Ann says carefully. "I wanted you to know that... we didn't think things were going to turn out like this at all. We've never seen this before after the other Palaces. I mean, Kamoshida and Madarame were fine, and even Futaba had a Palace, she's _definitely_ fine."

"I know," Haru says. "Ann, I don't want to blame any of us for what happened to my father, alright?" Because she'd been right there with the rest of the Phantom Thieves. If she blames any of them, she's blaming herself too. And deep down, she knows they hadn't done anything to hurt her father. She _knows_ that they're good people, all of them, and she just doesn't have it in her to blame them.

"You're a really good person, Haru," Ann says.

Haru shakes her head. "I don't know," she says. "Maybe I'm just being selfish--I don't want to lose my father _and_ my friends."

They don't talk about it anymore after that, for which Haru is grateful. Instead, Ann catches her up on what's happened to Akira while Haru waits for her phone to be charged enough to manage the trip to Shibuya. Apparently the metanav is gone too, and one of the reasons for this trip is to get a new version back onto everyone's phones. Haru definitely doesn't want to run out of battery before that.

And then the two of them head out toward Shibuya. Haru _knows_ that she should preserve the small amount of charge she'd managed to get into her phone battery, but she can't help sending a message to the group chat.

> **Operation Save Akira's Dumb Butt**
> 
> I'm coming with Ann to meet up with all of you :)
> 
> **Futaba:** Haru! Are you feeling okay?
> 
> More or less. Not ready to talk about it yet, but... ready to help 
> 
> **Yusuke:** Are you sure? You don't need to push yourself if you're not ready
> 
> I'm ready, I don't want to sit around at home anymore, and I want to help Akira
> 
> **Ryuji:** Awesome! See you there

The new mission, the reassurance that the rest of the Phantom Thieves are looking out our for her, they don't get rid of the hurt Haru's been through in the past few days. But they smooth over the most jagged edges of the pain, help her to think about something else for a while, give her something else to focus on for now.

"You guys..." she looks up at Ann. "I know I haven't been with the Thieves long, but... it means a lot that you've all been so supportive."

"Of course," Ann says. She hesitates, then says, "I know you said you don't really want to talk about what happened to your father, but--we're pretty sure it was something Akechi did."

Haru nods. "I know," she says. "We already thought he was planning something in there, so... it just makes sense."

They sit in silence for the rest of the trip, but... it's a comfortable silence.

-//-

_June 26_

_Morning_

-//-

Yu goes with Nanako, Futaba, and Morgana to Shibuya station, where they hang around and wait for the others to show up. Ryuji is not, in fact, half an hour early, which doesn't seem to surprise any of the others. They're speculating about what--if anything--they might find in Mementos, when Futaba sucks in a sudden breath and says, "Guess who I just saw."

"Who?" Nanako asks.

"Akechi," Futaba says. "No--don't turn around! I don't think he's seen any of us yet."

"What is Akechi doing here?" Morgana demands. "Looking for us?"

"Going to Mementos, maybe?" Nanako suggests tentatively. "If he knows about Palaces, he probably knows about Mementos too. And you have to come here to get in there, so maybe it's just a coincidence."

"Maybe," Morgana says.

"I think he saw just saw us," Futaba says. "I accidentally made eye contact, what do we do?"

"Run?" Morgana suggests.

"We can't run," Futaba says. "He probably _killed Haru's dad_!"

"So that makes you want to confront him?" Morgana asks.

"Here he comes," Futaba hisses.

"What a coincidence," says a voice behind Yu, and he turns around to see--

-//-

(Oh _fuck_ , Akechi thinks, as the guy turns around and he belatedly recognizes Yu Narukami, who he'd once seen holding his own against a _Reaper_ )

-//-

\--Goro Akechi, whose face he recognizes only from watching the interviews he's given about the Phantom Thieves.

"What do you want, Akechi?" Futaba asks.

No one, as far as Yu knows, has talked about what the Phantom Thieves' plan is for confronting Akechi now that he's murdered the father of one of their friends. Not just murdered him, Yu knows, but done it in a way that no one will ever be able to hold him accountable for. Judging by Futaba's flatly hostile tone, however, it seems like she at least is not interested in pretending to be friends.

"Nothing in particular," Akechi says. For some reason, he seems nervous. Maybe he's just concerned about accidentally saying too much in front of Yu and Nanako--as far as Akechi knows, neither of them have anything to do with the metaverse. "I haven't heard from any of you in a few days," Akechi continues. "And I thought we were going to finish our... _project_ together. But it seems like you all went ahead and did that on your own."

Futaba balls her hands into fists at her side. Morgana narrows his eyes, and his tail starts to twitch. Nanako just looks wide eyed and nervous, and Yu realizes he's going to need to say anything.

"Listen," he says, stepping in front of the others and keeping his voice intentionally civil. "We haven't met, but I understand that you're a Persona-user that's been working with the Phantom Thieves lately."

He's not sure if it's a good idea to out himself to Akechi as someone that knows about the metaverse, but he doesn't have any interest in talking in circles right now. No one knows what Akechi is capable of, but Yu does know what he's capable of himself. He's confident that he can take on most threats within the metaverse, including--if it comes to it--Goro Akechi.

Besides, maybe it's time to take a page out of his uncle's book, and trying a little bit of directness.

And if nothing else, it seems to throw Akechi.

"Well," he says. "That's not--"

"It's not exactly correct," Yu interrupts, while the teen is still scrambling for something safe to say. "You're right, it's not. Really what I've heard is that you've been working _against_ the Thieves."

Akechi's smile fades, and Yu catches a glimpse of another expression underneath it. Something angry and, he thinks, a little bit afraid. "I don't know what you're talking about," Akechi says.

"Yes you do," Yu says calmly, refusing to look away from Akechi's suddenly shifty eyes. "And so do we. Everyone here knows what you did. All of the Thieves know _exactly_ what you did." He hopes it's not obvious that he's bluffing, and that of course no one has any idea how Akechi had killed Okumura in such a horrible way. But they know that Akechi had done it, and the expression on his face is all the confirmation Yu really needs. "So we're all on the same page now," Yu continues. "And I think it's going to be a lot better for everyone if you stay out of each other's way from now on."

There's a long pause.

"Fine," Akechi says, after a visible effort to (slightly) pull himself together. "But for the record, I of course have no idea what you're talking about."

"Yes," Yu says. "You do."

Akechi flushes slightly. "Understood," he says, and looks past Yu to address Futaba. "I guess this means our association is over," he tells her.

"No kidding," Futaba says.

"Tell Akira for me," Akechi says. Futaba flinches slightly. "Since he's apparently not planning to respond to my texts anytime soon."

"We'll make sure he knows," Morgana says flatly.

"Hmm," Akechi says, and turns to make what seems to be his best attempt at a dignified escape.

He makes it about twenty feet before Futaba cups her hands around her mouth and full out _shouts_ , at the top of her lungs, "Don't come back, Flamingo!"

He freezes, just for a second, but Yu's pretty sure they all see it. Then he keeps walking.

"Flamingos aren't even really _pink_!" Futaba keeps shouting, because she has apparently chosen this moment to completely lose her mind. "They just eat a lot of shrimp, they're _fakers,_ just like _you!_ "

"Okay," Yu says, taking gentle hole of her elbow and giving it a gentle tug. "I think this is probably a good time to walk away from this situation."

Futaba struggles against him for a second, then sags as she seems to realize exactly what she's done. "I can't believe I just did that," she says.

"What _was_ that?" Morgana asks.

"I just--" she glances over her shoulder, in the direction that Akechi had run off to. "I just got really angry when he started talking about Akira. I know, I shouldn't have said it..."

"Yeah," Yu says, looking around at the people now eyeing them disapprovingly. "That probably wasn't the best idea, honestly. We should probably find somewhere else to wait for the others."

"It was hilarious, though," Morgana says, as they all start moving.

"Isn't he going to be a lot more mad now, though?" Nanako asks.

"Oh yeah," Morgana says. "But who cares? We tried pretending to be friends with him, and I don't think anyone wants to go back to that."

"No way," Futaba mutters.

"So it's fine," Morgana says. "I mean, at least until he decides to start trying to get revenge, or picking us off because we know too much about him."

Yu sighs, and tries to pretend that they're not still being stared at as they weave their way through the crowded station. The thing is that the person who would probably have some really good ideas about fixing this would be Akira. He's gotten himself into enough trouble to also know how to get himself back _out_ of it. Yu doesn't have any idea what to do with an angry Persona-user sneaking around in the metaverse. 

"Let's just keep an eye out for him from now on," he says. "And be careful while we're in Mementos."

"Yeah," Morgana says. "We definitely don't need any more Akechi shaped problems right now."

Yu thinks that they don't need any more problems _period_ right now, but then again, maybe that is a little too much to ask for.

"Ann just texted that she and Haru here," Nanako announces, looking down at her phone. "And Yusuke's train is going to be here in a couple minutes."

"And here comes Ryuji," Morgana says, pointing up the hall with his tail.

"Perfect," Yu says, checking his own phone. Along with the messages in the group chat that Nanako had seen, there's also a text from Rise, saying she was heading into Mementos. Of course she has the same butterfly version of the app that he does, so she hadn't had to wait. "Let's all get in there and see if we can figure anything out."

And so he takes the Phantom Thieves into Mementos. The new app installs itself onto all of their phones, just like they'd been hoping and expecting that it would. The door to the Velvet Room--Yu can see, even if nobody else here can--is just as thoroughly sealed as the one he'd seen in the real world. Other than that, Mementos seems exactly the same as it always has been.

(There's no sign of Akechi, which is a relief)

The three navigators go into a huddle right away, and Yu leaves them to it. They seem to know what they're doing, at least, which is more than he can say for anyone else right now. He trusts them, and after about fifteen minutes of whispering and Persona summoning, Nanako makes a noise like an excited squeak.

"What is it?" Yu asks, focusing on the three of them in a second. 

"Joker's here," Futaba says.

Instant and overwhelming excitement from the rest of the group.

"What do you mean he's _here_?" Ryuji demands. "He's in the hospital, isn't he?"

"No, he's here!" Nanako insists.

"They're right," Rise agrees. "We can all feel..." She hesitates. "It's probably him."

"It's definitely him," Nanako insists. "It's just that he feels--sick?"

"Weak," Rise offers.

"Yeah," Nanako agrees. "He feels kind of weak, but it's still definitely him."

"He does actually feel a little different," Futaba admits. "I don't know. There's something weird going on here. Ryuji's right, he _is_ supposed to be in the hospital, so I don't know how he can be here too? Maybe that's why he feels different, or...?" She trails off and shrugs, obviously at a loss for words.

"Do you think you can talk to him?" Yu asks.

"We can definitely try," Rise says, and again the three navigators huddle up to do their work. This time, though, the rest of them bunch up close, watching with palpable anxiety as they try to get in contact with Akira.

The rest of them watch more or less in silence, until finally--at some unspoken signal that none of the rest of them can see--all three sag back together.

"No luck?" Yu asks.

" _No_ ," Nanako says. She gets up off the ground and comes to him. Yu folds her into a hug.

"He's just way too far away," Futaba says. "We could all feel he was there, but..." She shrugs, looking completely discouraged. "We couldn't make contact."

"I don't think even Fuuka could do it," Rise says. "And she's definitely the strongest navigator." She taps a finger against her chin for a few seconds, then looks over at Futaba. "Did you feel that there were other people there too?"

"I think so," Futaba says.

"Other people?" Yu echoes.

"Three of them," Nanako agrees. "But none of them were people I'd seen with my Persona before?" She shrugs, and looks at the other two.

"Elizabeth," Rise says immediately. "One of them was definitely Elizabeth, I fought her during the P-1 Tournament, so I'm not going to forget her."

"Okay," Yu says, trying to figure out whether or not this is a good thing. On the one hand, Akira and Elizabeth have worked out some kind of deal, so at least he knows they can work together. On the other hand, Elizabeth is _Elizabeth,_ someone that even the other Velvet Room residents seem to be in equal parts confused and exasperated by. With Akira presumably not at his best, Yu is more worried that the two of them might get into something he isn't ready to handle right now, than he is that Elizabeth might intentionally hurt him. "What about the other two?" he asks.

This time, Rise shakes her head. "Sorry," she says. "I don't know."

"It's okay," Yu says. "You don't know who it is, that's fine."

"No," Rise says. "That's not it--I _swear_ I've felt at least one of them before, I just can't remember where."

"Recently?" Futaba asks.

"Back in Inaba, I think," Rise says. "But..." She trails off, looking worried.

"We'll meet up and brainstorm later," Yu says. "There aren't that many people that ever made it into the TV World, right? So I'm sure we'll figure it out eventually."

"Okay," Rise agrees.

"And in the meantime," Yu goes on. "I'm thinking it might be a good idea to try and get lower in Mementos. If you guys aren't close enough to get in contact from here, maybe being five or ten floors down will help."

"It might," Nanako agrees, perking up. 

"But there's all the locked doors," Haru says tentatively. "Right?"

"Nope," Futaba says. "I mean--yeah, there are. But I'm almost positive some of those doors will open for us now. The ones closer to the top felt a lot less solid than they did when me and Rise scanned Mementos a couple months ago."

"Then let's get going!" Ryuji says. "No reason to just hang around here."

Morgana groans. "I don't know if we really want to be fighting without Akira again," he says. "Remember how bad Madarame's Palace was?"

"That's okay," Nanako says. "Yu will come with, right?"

And then everyone is looking at him, and Yu remembers standing right here, on the top level of Mementos, while Akira asked him to promise that he would take over if anything ever happened. And Yu had said--well, he'd said yes, because he hadn't expected for a second that it was going to happen. 

Now that it's happened, Yu knows that he can't keep that promise. He can't take Akira's place, he's not going to even try. He'll fight with them, because all of them have the same goal in mind. Get to Akira. Help him in whatever way he needs. 

But not replace him.

"Sure," he says, to the still waiting group. "Lead the way."

-//-

_???_

-//-

Akira spends more time asleep than awake in the hours (days?) after Lavenza's fusion.

He's been told that recovering from his time in the Sea of Souls is going to take a while. He's _also_ been told that pushing himself so hard to help with Lavenza's fusion had probably not been the best thing for speeding up that recovery, but that had been important and necessary, and so Akira decides the price is worth it.

But it's still frustrating, to feel as weak as he does, to know that there are important things that need to be talked over and figured out that he's just... not ready to think about yet.

He spends a lot of time talking to Lavenza, instead. Of course he does--he's missed her, he's been trying to find her for months, and here she is, suddenly, whole and herself again. There's all kinds of things going wrong, but not... not _right here_. Not _right this second_. So, in the hours where he's not asleep, while there's nothing to do but wait until he's strong enough for them to start figuring out next steps, he spends a lot of time talking to Lavenza.

They talk about Akira's time in Tokyo. She knows some of it, of course, because she had been there as the twins. But there's a lot that she hadn't known or hadn't cared about, so there's plenty for them to talk about now. He tells her about Nanako's newly awakened Persona, which Lavenza approves of, and about the way Yusuke's had evolved after they beat Madarame's Shadow. She tells him, evenyually, about her experience of being both Caroline and Justine.

"It meant a lot to me that you tried to be my friend," she tells him quietly, after one of their conversations that has wound its way around to her. "I know that I... the way I was, you had no reason to trust me. Or even to be kind to me."

"I wasn't going to just be a jerk about it," Akira says. He fidgets uncomfortably. "They were--I mean, you..." He hesitates, then sighs. They need to talk about this, they really do. There's no point in pretending that it hadn't been weird. "I wish I could say that I knew it was you," he says. "Or that there was something familiar, or... _something_. But I never even suspected that you were there the whole time. Even after we talked about bonds, and how the three of us had this bond that _we_ should have had, I never thought--"

"There was no reason you would have," Lavenza says quietly.

"But I _should_ have," Akira says. "I mean, there was a part of you with me all that time, I should have known."

"Even if you had known," Lavenza says. "What difference would it have made?"

"I would have known where you were," Akira says. "I might have been able to find something I could do to help you earlier."

"You helped," Lavenza assures him. "When we didn't know each other, you were still the best part of that imposter's Velvet Room. Your visits became something to look forward to. You give me _hope_ , and that was..." She takes a breath that sounds ragged, and her voice breaks as she says, "That _helped_ , Trickster."

It's the way she says it that convinces Akira that she means it--the way she says _Trickster_ , in that particular tone of voice that she uses when she talks to him, the tone he has been waiting five years to hear again. Over time, in that one word, he has heard the change in the way Lavenza feels about him. 

In the beginning the word had been clinical and terse. He had been a clueless kid, and she had been handed the impossible job of trying to keep him out of trouble until it was his time to come to the Velvet Room. After that, as they explored the TV World, as he learned to use his Persona and she learned that he was not going to be chased away, her voice had softened. He remembers that she used to hesitate sometimes before she said the word, just for a second, just for half a breath, like she was always trying to figure him out.

And then finally had come friendship, a deep and _real_ friendship, and the way she'd said his name had changed again. Akira could hear it in her voice, can _still_ hear it, every time she calls him Trickster. He can hear the bond between them as clearly in that one word as he can feel it in his heart.

Which is probably why this is the moment--before his brain has a chance to point out that his is a really bad idea--that he opens his mouth and says, "Can we talk about us?"

"About us?" Lavenza asks, raising her eyebrows.

"I..." And _now_ here comes his brain, rushing in with reason after reason after reason that he shouldn't be saying this. 

"Trickster?"

His chest hurts, and he closes his eyes. The image that rises up in his mind's eye is a memory--lost and only recently regained from the Sea of Souls--of his time in the labyrinths. He remembers being twelve, and the feeling of overwhelming _relief_ to have Lavenza standing next to him. He remembers being sixteen, and watching the expression on the face of his younger self's face, and thinking _that is what love is supposed to look like._

"I don't want to have to be without you again," he says slowly. "And it--it doesn't have to anything to do with the Velvet Room or fighting Shadows or anything like that. It's just that..." He's waited, for five years, to see her again. He's searched for her for months, and he'd helped to fuse her back together in a process that had taken so much energy out of him that he's _still_ recovering. Saying all of this out loud feels dangerous in a way that just fighting Shadows _isn't_. The idea of ruining things with Lavenza is one that honestly scares him. "It's just," he says, carefully not looking at her. "There's no one else in the _world_ like you. There's no one else I'd rather be with."

-//-

Lavenza understands exactly what she's telling him. She hears the words that he's trying so hard not to say out loud, and there is something about them that raises up an unfamiliar warmth inside her. She hears what he's saying, and a part of her wants to ask him--

_Don't you know that you're the one that's special? Don't you realize that you have done things that I have never seen before?_

_Don't you understand that I have never known anyone like you?_

But she can't just-- _say_ that. She hears what he's saying to her and she is a afraid of what it would mean if she told him _I know what you're saying, and I feel..._

What _does_ she feel, exactly? She doesn't have any experience in this. She doesn't recognize the warmth she feels inside her chest when she sees him. 

(Caroline, she thinks, hadn't either. Because Caroline had been her impulsiveness and her anger, every piece of her that had wanted to shout at the world that _this isn't right_ , every part of her that had been forced into silence instead)

(But Justine had probably known. Her quieter side, that part of her that wants to do her duty to the Velvet Room and care for her guest, who had looked forward the most to every chance to see him, _that_ is the part of her that would have known how to answer)

Akira is still looking at her, hope and fear mingled together in his golden eyes, the former emotion quickly fading into the latter as he waits for her to give him _some_ idea of what she's thinking.

Lavenza wishes she had a better idea of what she's thinking herself.

"I'm not going anywhere until the imposter is gone," she tells him slowly. "I'll be here with you for as long as I possibly can." She _wants_ to be here. Not--well, not here in the depths of Mementos, but _with him,_ wherever that happens to be. There is a disaster in front of them, an imposter in the Velvet Room with unknown but surely terrible plans. Lavenza's first priority should be to find a way to take him on, to restore her home and her master.

Instead, there is a small but burning part of her that hopes that it will take _some_ time to resolve. She isn't ready to leave him again. She won't be ready for a long time.

"I will stay as long as I can," she says. "Until it's all over."

-//-

Akira hears the answer, and understands that it is a rebuke. She'll stay while she can. And when it's time to move on, it will be _time to move on_. Akira doesn't know exactly what he'd expected or hoped that she would say, because he knows who she is and what her job is and that she isn't going to be here forever. Or even for long. 

(He's going to regret opening his stupid mouth for a long time, regret forcing her to tell him out loud that she'll be leaving again when it's all over)

But that doesn't mean they don't still have time together. Until Fake Igor is gone, she's going to be here. And Akira has no idea what it's going to take to get him out of the Velvet Room, so there is still _time_. "Good," he says, even though something in him feels raw and painful. He leans back a little, puts some space between them, tries to--tries to play off what he'd said earlier, make it seem like it's less important than it had really been. "I don't think Fake Igor has any clue what's about to happen to him."

Lavenza seems to hesitate for a second, and in the heartbeat before she smiles, Akira is worried that things are going to be different now. That he'd said too much, and things are going to be weird and he won't be able to get them back to normal. But then she laughs, and shakes her head. "I don't think _we_ have any idea what's going to happen to him," she says. "We don't have a plan."

"We don't have a plan _yet_ ," Akira says. "We'll think of something, and it'll be great."

"Oh of course," Lavenza says. "Of _course_ you wouldn't be afraid to take on someone like that with no plan."

"We'll figure something out," Akira says. "And it's not like I'm doing it alone, right? There's you, and everyone from Inaba, and--" He grins. "The Phantom Thieves too."

"I'll admit that there are few groups I can think of that would be _more_ inclined than your Phantom Thieves to cause whatever chaos is necessary to break into the Velvet Room," Lavenza admits. "I haven't had much chance to see them--"

"You'll like them," Akira says confidently, and to his relief, the conversation moves on from the awkward rut they'd half fallen into. She knows the Phantom Thieves, because she's been watching them all as the twins. But Akira's happy to be able to fill in all the details that she doesn't already know. He tells her about how Ryuji had completely freaked when he found out that one of their classmates has started a fan site, about how Futaba's been learning to handle the world outside her room with _amazing_ speed, about Morgana yelling at him to go to bed at least three times a week.

(Incidentally, this leads to the revelation that Morgana had been made by Igor and sent out into the metaverse specifically to help him)

(...Morgana is going to be _emphatically not happy_ to learn that he had never been human after all)

They talk. And the awkwardness eases away, and it feels just like it used to. Sure, back in Inaba he'd been a non-translucent twelve year old messing around in the TV World while Yu did all the hard work, and now he's a bodiless seventeen year old facing a fight with someone that had taken out the Velvet Room. But sitting here talking to Lavenza?

It feels just like it used to.

-//-

("What do you think they're talking about?" Jose asks Elizabeth, as the two of them watch Akira and Lavenza talking animatedly together. "They don't look happy like that when they're talking to _us_ ")

("They are talking about everything except for what they _want_ to be talking about," Elizabeth tells him. Jose looks up at her, expression owlish in his wide eyed confusion)

-//-

_July 2_

_After School_

-//-

A week speeds by.

They don't go to Mementos every day which--to Ann, at least--is both intensely frustrating and a kind of relief. They need to find Akira, obviously, but the navigators report that he's not getting any weaker when they scan down to the depths of Mementos, and actually seems to be getting gradually _stronger_. So things aren't as urgent as it seems like they might be. 

Hopefully.

And anyway, they'd raced through Okumura's Palace just the week before, and there's only so much energy that any of them have in them. Even with Yu joining them for now, even with him being stronger than Akira is, it still takes way too long to work their way down. And since they're taking days off to recover--which they _need,_ but which is _hard_ \--they still haven't managed to get to a low enough level for the navigators to reach Akira.

(Sometimes, Ann wonders if it would be better to just let Yu speed ahead of everyone--he's probably strong enough that he could take on all these Shadows on his own)

(Except that he isn't a navigator, so Futaba, Nanako, and Rise would have to go with him anyway, and he can't turn into a _bus_ so Morgana has to come, and at that point--well, the rest of them want to be there helping, so why shouldn't they be?)

Today, Saturday, is another day off, and Ann has made plans to go with Ryuji, Yusuke, and Haru to the hospital where Akira has been transferred out of intensive care, and according to Futaba--who had been to see him yesterday with Sojiro--allowed to see visitors for the first time. It's sort of stupid, because they're pretty sure by now that the part of him that's actually Akira--his consciousness or mind or soul or whatever--is in Mementos. But they can't _get_ to him there, and it's hard to know that a friend is in the hospital and not want to at least visit. It's not going to do anything to help Akira get out of whatever trouble he's in, but it might just make the rest of them feel a little bit better.

"So Haru actually came to school today?" Ryuji asks, as he and Ann stand waiting by the first floor stairs. 

"She did," Ann confirms. "She actually came back yesterday, I saw her before class."

"I would've skipped school way longer if it was me," Ryuji says. "I can't believe she wanted to come back so soon after everything with her dad."

"I think she wants to feel like something is still normal," Ann says, then elbows him. "Anyway, shh. She's coming."

Ryuji turns around to look, and sighs. "Why's she got the student council president with her?" he asks.

And Makoto Niijima _is_ , in fact, with Haru as the newest member of the Phantom Thieves comes up the hall toward them. They're talking quietly, their heads together as they walk, and Ann is still trying to convince herself that they're talking about something else when the two upperclassmen reach her and Ryuji.

"Hello Ann," Haru says. "And Ryuji. I... mentioned to Makoto during lunch that we were going to see Akira at the hospital, and she asked if she could come with us."

Ann has not had any reason to talk to Makoto since the awkward conversation when she had accused her of being a Phantom Thief, so there's a few seconds of heavy silence between them now.

"What do you want to come with us for?" Ryuji asks.

"I won't if you'd rather I didn't," Makoto says. She looks uncomfortable too. "But I heard about Akira's illness from Haru, and... well, he's my friend and I'd like to go see him. If that wouldn't be intruding."

"Of course it wouldn't be intruding," Haru says immediately, but Ann shares a quick look with Ryuji. He kind of shrugs, and Ann bites back a sigh. It's not like this is actually Phantom Thief business, it's just a bunch of them going to visit a friend in the hospital. And Makoto (for reasons that Ann still doesn't fully understand) is one of Akira's friends.

"Sure," she says. "We can all go together."

So there they all go, three Phantom Thieves and the student council president, to the hospital. They meet Yusuke on the way (he seems surprised to see Makoto), and all five of them head inside together.

"Are we going to be allowed to see him?" Haru asks, as Ann leads the way inside. "It's supposed to be family only for a while, right?"

"Well--" Ann hesitates, and shoots a look in Makoto's direction. She'd been planning to bring this up at the hospital anyway, but there's a little bit more risk now that Makoto is involved. "I think I might be able to get us in. I got to know some people here pretty well while Shiho was recovering from... you know. They used to let me in to see her when I wasn't supposed to, so if it's not actually going to hurt Akira, I think I can convince them."

"Really?" Yusuke asks.

Ann nods. "Well, maybe," she says. "It depends whose shift it is."

But it turns out that they're lucky today. The first nurse they run into is one that had always been particularly sympathetic to her visits with Shiho. She's similarly sympathetic to Ann's story about Akira, and if Ann lets herself cry just a _little_ while she explains that they just want a chance to see him for a while, well... that's not much of a stretch.

(It's just that Shiho hasn't even been out of the hospital for all that long, and she's _still_ recovering, and now Akira's hurt too...)

It definitely earns her the nurse's sympathy, anyway. Soon enough they've been given Akira's room number along with a promise that the nurse will look the other way for a while, as long as they can keep quiet and not make trouble.

Ann doesn't explain that trouble is already in the hospital room, and just says thank you instead.

The room is crowded with all five of them bunched up around the bed, but somehow it still feels strangely empty. Ann stands against the wall, hugging herself as she watches Akira sleep. According to Futaba--who has been getting all the news about Akira's progress from Sojiro as soon as he hears it from the doctors--Akira is making progress. He's getting better, apparently, and more stable. He's breathing on his own, and more regularly. But looking down at him now, Ann has the same gut feeling of disbelief that she has when the navigators claim that whatever part of Akira they're sensing in Mementos is getting stronger. It doesn't feel _possible_ to believe that he's getting better. Not when she can see him right here, with her own eyes, looking vulnerable in his hospital gown and small next to all the machines he's hooked up to.

"This is nuts," Ryuji mutters, dropping into a chair next to Akira's bed. "It's all kinds of messed up, seeing him like this."

"The doctors really don't know what happened?" Makoto asks. 

The Thieves glance at each other.

"No," Ann says at last. "The... doctors don't."

"It's a little frightening," Makoto says quietly. "To think that someone can be perfectly healthy one day, and then suddenly..."

"It _is_ scary," Haru agrees. 

"I wish he would just wake up," Yusuke says, the words almost bursting out of him with how sudden they are. "I know that he won't, but I just--hate seeing this."

"Yusuke..." Ann says.

"We should be doing more," he says, ignoring her.

"There's nothing you can do to help," Makoto says, and Yusuke seems to remember suddenly that there's someone in the room that _doesn't_ know about the metaverse.

"I know," he says, after a long pause. "But he's my best friend. It's hard to think that there's nothing I can do to help him."

Makoto nods sympathetically, and Ann puts a hand on his shoulder. She tries to think of something to say that will remind Yusuke that they're doing everything they can by fighting their way down through Mementos, but will _not_ clue Makoto in on the fact that there's anything weird going on. She comes up short though, ,and they just sit in silence for what feels like a long time. 

There just... isn't much to say. They're worried about Akira. Talking isn't going to change it.

And so there they are. Sitting in silence, watching the walls or each other or the floor, all of them lost in their own thoughts. Time passes, and the only sound in the room is the vague buzz of activity that filters in from the hall outside. 

It should be depressing, but Ann feels herself growing gradually calmer as she just sits there with her friends. This isn't the afternoon she's spent sitting in a hospital room, waiting for a friend to wake up. But her long afternoons with Shiho had been lonely and riddled with doubts about whether they'd done everything they could to try and help her. This afternoon is far from lonely, with so many people around. And Ann is sure that they _are_ doing everything they can for Akira, that their time spent diving into Mementos will help Akira eventually.

So all things considered, spending this afternoon with her friends (and Makoto) and the comatose Akira really isn't as difficult as it could have been. 

-//-

_???_

-//-

Akira spends an indeterminate amount of time in the depth of Mementos with Lavenza, Elizabeth, and Jose. A lot of that time is just sleeping, because, honestly, he's tired. He's tired and he's hurt and they're letting him sleep, so he does.

But eventually he wakes up, and the exhaustion is gone. He's still a half-visible soul without a body trapped in the depths of Mementos, but that's fine, he's gotten used to that. The point is that he finally feels like he's ready to do something about it now.

He wonders for half a second if that's something that should worry him, then shakes it off. So maybe most people would take longer to get used to being a ghost in the middle of some kind of weird prison at the bottom of what Morgana calls 'everyone's Palace.' He's not sure if the fact that he's okay with it has more to do with how much weird stuff he's already seen, or if he's been subconsciously adapting to being here while he slept, or if he's just... kind of weird himself.

Either way, there's more important things to be worrying about than whether or not he should still be freaking out about this. He's feeling better--stronger--now, so he stands on his own and goes looking for everyone else. There's no immediate sign of Lavenza or Elizabeth, but Akira finds Jose by his car.

"Good morning!" Jose says, the second he spots Akira.

"Good morning," Akira says. " _Is_ it morning?"

Jose shrugs, looking completely unbothered by the fact that he doesn't know. "It's what humans say to each other when they wake up," he says. "Isn't it? And you just woke up."

"I guess it is," Akira admits. "And I _did_ just wake up." He's noticed that Jose keeps talking about the kinds of things that humans do, and he wonders what Jose is, exactly. He's obviously not human himself, so does that mean he's something more like what Lavenza and her sisters are?

It would probably be rude to bring it up.

"What are you doing?" he asks instead, because Jose had seemed really intent on whatever he'd been working on with his car before Akira came over.

"Do you want to see?" Jose asks, looking so enthusiastic at the idea that it's basically impossible for Akira to say no. So he listens while Jose shows him all the things that he's been making, and talks effusively about the flowers he's somehow found a way to harvest from Mementos, and somehow Akira finds himself telling the small child (or whatever he is?) about the Phantom Thieves.

"We've never been down this far," he tells Jose. By this point he's sitting on one of Jose's crates (Jose has a _lot_ of stuff), leaning forward a little and gesticulating as he talks. "Although I guess the goal is to get here eventually. But so far we've mostly just been wandering around close to the top." He gestures vaguely upward, and wonders how far down they really are. How many levels below that sealed door are they? Ten floors? Twenty? More?

(He feels very far away from home, suddenly)

"Would you rather be up there?" Jose asks. "You look sad."

"I'm--a little homesick, I guess?" Akira says. Jose's captivated expression does not fade, and Akira gets the impression (not for the first time) that Jose really would be happier if he could spend more time around other people. "You know, if you come up closer to the surface, you might run into us sometime."

"Really?" Jose asks. "Would that be okay?"

"Sure," Akira says. "We can help you find your flowers, if you want help with that."

Jose bounces a little on his feet, and looks absolutely over the moon about the whole idea.

"But I'd need to get back to, uh--" This still feels way too weird to say out loud. "Back to my body. And I think the other two would be most likely to have an idea of how to do that, so do you know where they went?"

"I think they're just looking around," Jose says. "They should be back soon."

They sit and chat for a little bit longer, and before too much more time has passed, the two Velvet Room attendants come toward them.

(Ex-Velvet Room attendants? Elizabeth had left by choice, and Akira doesn't think Lavenza is going to be able to go back any time soon either, not until they get Fake Igor out of there)

"You look like you're feeling better," Lavenza says, when she's close enough that she won't have to shout. 

"I'm ready to start talking about what happens next," Akira says with an only slightly tired smile. "Obviously we're not going to stay down here forever, and there's a lot to figure out with the Velvet Room."

"We were discussing it a little bit before you woke up," Lavenza says. "But the problem is that the Velvet Room is sealed. We need to get in there if we want to confront him, and for right now we _can't_ get in there."

Akira nods, already thinking. He understands that the Velvet Room is sealed because he'd screwed up by confronting Fake Igor, so it has to at least sort of be his responsibility to fix things. He feels responsible, and he also feels like... well, like it's not going to be great for the Velvet Room to be closed up like this for so long. Even if this hadn't been his fault, he would have wanted to help.

"Could we lure Fake Igor out?" he asks. "We can't get in there, can he leave?"

"He could," Lavenza says. "Although he doesn't have any reason to. As long as he's in the Velvet Room, he's safe to play any game he wants."

Akira makes a face. "I'm really tired of hearing about his games," he says. "What's he trying to do, anyway? If this is all a game to him, what does _winning_ look like?"

"Impossible to say for sure," Elizabeth says. "Not unless we were to ask him ourselves, which I'm sure would be impossible right now."

"But he's a being of control," Lavenza adds. "A powerful one, who has already been able to take over the Velvet Room. We can guess that whatever his plans are, they will in some way involve imposing his control over a wider group. It's likely that he will aim for as wide a group of people as he can."

"And of course he's sitting in the middle of a city where nine million people live," Akira says.

"There's _nine million_ humans in your city?" Jose asks.

His reaction at least has the effect of breaking a little of the tension that has settled over the group at Lavenza's explanation. Akira cracks a smile. "A little more, I think," he says.

Jose looks impressed.

Akira's smile fades a little bit, as he goes back to thinking over their problem. Fake Igor is barricaded inside the Velvet Room. If they want to confront him, which he's pretty sure _all_ of them do, they need to lure him out. "If his whole thing is controlling people," he says. "Then it's kind of hard to imagine that it's not going to piss him off for the Phantom Thieves to keep fighting."

"I'm not _exactly_ sure that making him angry should be the end goal," Lavenza says.

"It's not the end goal," Akira says. "It's just an important step on the way _to_ the end goal. Because--look, I'm pretty sure he didn't like me from the beginning. He wouldn't have made the Velvet Room into a prison if he didn't dislike me. Then he kicked me out of the Velvet Room, which I'm sure he expected was going to kill me, so seeing the Thieves back in action _is_ going to be something he doesn't expect." Hopefully? "And it's not going to make him happy that we're still stealing Treasures. I think that sounds like the kind of thing that might just be able to lure him into doing something stupid."

"You want to use yourself and your friends as bait," Lavenza says.

"I don't want to think of it as bait," Akira says. "Because bait makes it sound like we don't have a shot at beating him when he eventually comes after us, and I... I have to think that we do." Because if they have no shot at beating him, then they might as well give up now. And Akira isn't ready to give up. "And I'm _not_ going to ask my friends to do anything they're not willing to help with. But..." He looks down and through his hands. "But I just have a hard time imagining that they'll hear about Fake Igor trying to spread his control around Tokyo and think that it's okay." And if they decide it _is_ too dangerous, or something they don't want to get mixed up with? Then he's just--going to have to figure out a way to do it alone, because he's not letting this go.

(He hopes they'll agree, though. He'd much rather _not_ do this alone)

"It's a dangerous plan," Lavenza says.

"Not a bad one, though," Elizabeth says. "A Trickster likely _would_ be the type of highly unpredictable nuisance someone like Yaldabaoth would find most annoying."

"Thanks," Akira says. 

"Oh no," Lavenza says under her breath.

"Also, is Yalba... Yal..." He makes a face as his tongue trips over the name, and Lavenza apparently takes pity oh him.

"Yaldabaoth," she prompts.

"That's _really_ his name?"

"Yes," Lavenza says.

Akira hesitates. "I... think I'm going to keep calling him Fake Igor," he says, because at least he can pronounce that.

"It is technically a correct description," Elizabeth says.

"Okay," Akira says. "So that's the plan, is for the Phantom Thieves to keep going through Palaces until we piss Fake Igor off enough that he comes out to have a horrible fight with us."

"I don't love that plan," Lavenza says softly. "It puts you in a lot of danger. And while it's likely that stealing Treasures from Palaces would at least draw his attention, there's no guarantee that he would feel threatened enough to come out and confront you."

"Well then what would?" Akira asks.

Lavenza hesitates. Akira can read her expression without any trouble (even now, even after it's been _so long_ since they've seen each other, even though she's older than she had been then and has a face he can't stop watching as he tries to get used to the way she's grown up). And in her expression he sees her hesitation to be part of anything that's going to drag him into deeper trouble than what he's able to find all on his own.

"Come on," he says. "You know that I'm going to do this. So we might as well make sure that it's done right."

She sighs, but then nods. "Elizabeth and I went looking around in here while you were sleeping," she says. "And the Velvet Room is here."

"It's--"

"There are doors in the real world and in the metaverse," Lavenza says. "But while it's under the imposter's rule, the actual Velvet Room is locked away down here in the depths of Mementos. So if you go through with your plan of raiding Palaces and changing hearts to get his attention, you will also be generating notoriety among the public. That will gradually open the sealed doors above us in Mementos, until you and your friends find your way back here. And I highly doubt that he will choose to ignore you when you bring the Phantom Thieves to his front door. But _Trickster_ \--"

"Yeah?"

"It's dangerous. Likely more dangerous than anything else you have done before."

Akira nods. "Yeah," he says. "I know. But--"

"But you're not going to change your mind," Lavenza finishes for him. She sighs and stands, so Akira does too.

"Do you think that I can do it?" Akira asks. "Get back down here, draw Fake Igor's attention, lure him out of the Velvet Room?"

"I don't know how you'll manage it," Lavenza says. "And I don't know how you'll survive it." She hesitates, but not for long. Her face sets into a determined expression that makes Akira feel instantly a little bit less worried. "But yes. I believe that you will be able to do whatever you put your mind to."

Akira grins, and for the first time since getting kicked out of the Velvet Room--no, for the first time since they'd watched Haru's dad die on live TV--he feels like maybe everything _isn't_ spinning completely out of control after all.

"Now we should probably start thinking about getting out of here," Lavenza says. "I don't think you've recovered as much as you need to, to be able to return to the real world. But now that we know the Velvet Room and... Fake Igor are so close, I'm worried about him noticing we're here."

"You don't think he has already?" Akira asks.

"I don't think it would be so peaceful here if he knew that we had both survived, and were recovering right outside his front door," Lavenza says. "The damage to the Velvet Room would have masked what you and Elizabeth did to bring me back, and we've been keeping quiet since then. But I don't know if we can count on staying unnoticed much longer."

"Okay," Akira says. "Sure, yeah. Only--there's all those locked doors on the way back up the surface of Mementos, right? So how are we going to get out of here?"

"I can take care of that," Elizabeth says airily, and Akira remembers that she'd been able to teleport everyone back to the TV World at the end of the P-1 Tournament, too. 

(He thinks about asking whether she'd be able to just teleport the Thieves all together down to the bottom of Mementos after he's had a chance to get back to his body and meet up with them, but--)

(But he doesn't really think that would work as well. He has a gut feeling that stealing hearts and working their way gradually down to the depths of Mementos will piss Fake Igor off in a way that just showing up out of the blue _won't._ They're going to have to do this the slowly. No shortcuts)

"Thank you," Akira tells her. "And I mean--not just for getting us out of Mementos, but for finding us after Igor sealed up the Velvet Room, and getting us back here."

"We have a deal," Elizabeth reminds him. "And I haven't forgotten what you promised me--I'll be back for that eventually."

"I didn't think you were going to forget," Akira admits. "But if you're planning on coming back later, does that mean you're leaving for now?"

"It sounds like the two of you have this in hand," Elizabeth says. "And there are other things that I need to attend to for now." She shrugs, the easy motion a contradiction to how absolutely serious her voice has become. "If things go _very_ wrong, I'll make my way back here." She winks at Akira. "There's a bond between us," she says. "I'm sure we'll see each other again."

"I'm looking forward to it," Akira says, and it's true. Elizabeth isn't Lavenza--she's unpredictable and strange and she's not (exactly) a friend. But she's helped him a lot, and even if Akira doesn't understand her, he does like her. He can appreciate someone that can be relied on to bring a little bit of chaos to a situation.

Elizabeth laughs, clearly delighted, even as Lavenza sighs. 

"So how does this actually work?" Akira asks the two of them. "Elizabeth brings us back to the top level of Mementos, and then...?"

"You'll have to leave the metaverse from there," Lavenza says.

"I usually use an app," Akira says. "And I have no idea where my phone is right now."

"Then I'll bring you out with me," Lavenza says. "That shouldn't be a problem. And when your spirit re-enters the real world, your physical body should call to you. As long as you don't fight that call, you should be able to return to yourself without any problems."

"Okay," Akira says. "But I just want to get things straight--if we leave Mementos, that'll put us in Shibuya. And my body definitely isn't going to be just hanging around in the train station, so that means... if I'm going to be called back to my body, or whatever, that means you'll still be in Shibuya, not--not wherever I am."

"Do you want so badly for me to be there when you wake up?" she asks.

He looks away for a second, to hide the swirl of emotions the question seems to summon.

(Unfortunately, as he turns away, he happens to meet Elizabeth's eyes--she gives him an encouraging thumbs up that is somehow worse than looking at Lavenza would have been) 

"No," he says. "I mean--it's fine."

She hesitates a second (Akira continues to not look at Elizabeth at all, even though she is visibly and enthusiastically gesticulating in his peripheral vision). Then she says, "There is something else we should probably discuss before going back to the real world."

"Okay," Akira says. Lavenza seems serious, but since they've just finished talking about how to take down the guy that had invaded the Velvet Room, he figures that anything else she wants to talk about will at least be easier to handle than that. "Sure, what is it?"

"It's possible that you've been changed in some way by all this," Lavenza says slowly. "You fell apart in the Sea of Souls. You put yourself back together, and then you were able to help in fusing me back together. Those are not things that most people..."

She trails off. Elizabeth jumps in.

"They are not thing that _humans_ can do," she says.

There's a long pause. "Wait," Akira says. "What...?"

"Elizabeth is putting it very dramatically," Lavenza says, shooting her sister a look. "But there is reason to be concerned that..."

"What," Akira says. "That I'm not _human_?"

"That you might be only _mostly_ human," Lavenza corrects softly. "I wouldn't have said anything, except--" She takes a deep breath. "I was hoping all that might have been a temporary effect of your time in the Sea of Souls. But it doesn't look like it _is_ going to be temporary."

"Why not?" Akira asks. "Because--"

"Because your eyes changed when you came here," Lavenza says. "You have seen my eyes, my sisters' eyes, the eyes of Shadows. Those of us that are closer to the metaverse than the real world have eyes that show that connection. And so do you, now."

"That's--" He knows the exact shade of golden yellow she's talking about. He _has_ seen those eyes on Shadows, learned to associate them with things that are not quite human. He's not at all sure how to feel about the fact that this apparently applies to him now too. "That is something I'm going to have to think about?" A _lot_.

"It may still fade when you return to your body," Lavenza says. "But just in case..."

She's obviously worried, has clearly been hoping they wouldn't have to have this conversation. "Well, let's hope for that, then," he says, like it's no big deal. Like hasn't just learned that he might be only _mostly_ human.

(He'd been wrong, when he assumed that this would be easier to talk about than their plans for taking down Fake Igor)

"Shall we go?" Elizabeth asks. 

Akira looks at Lavenza, just to check that there's no more bombshells about to be dropped. She nods, and Akira turns back to Elizabeth. "I guess so," he says. 

So Elizabeth raises her arms, and with absolutely no fanfare whatsoever, they are back at the top of Mementos.

And they are not alone. Akira looks around, and what he sees makes him _smile_.

-//-

_July 9_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Saturday is another Mementos day, and Yu is absolutely determined that _this_ has to be the day that they get far enough down for the navigators to be able to reach Akira. They have to--it's been two weeks, and there are... certain consequences to how long he's been unconscious. Consequences that are only going to get worse the longer it takes for him to wake up.

Physically, his body is only going to get weaker. The doctors have been able to stabilize him, he's been out of the ICU for about a week now, but they've been clear about the fact that the sooner he wakes up, the easier his recovery is going to go. And logistically, there's only so long that two of the three navigators are going to be able to stay with them. Nanako has taken as much time away from school as she can (Dojima has _already_ had to go back to Inaba because of work). Rise is committed to a summer concert series away from the city that had been set up over a year ago, and which she won't be able to get out of. Futaba has been clear about the fact that she's not going to be able to reach Akira on her own, not unless they get _much_ farther down.

So it has to be soon. Today or tomorrow, and if they don't find a way to get to Akira by then, they'll have to think of something else.

Yu gets to Mementos first, does his usual check on the Velvet Room door to make sure that nothing's changed there, then settles in to wait. He's not surprised that no one else is there yet (Akira has made good but not overwhelmingly _punctual_ friends in Tokyo). He's gotten used to waiting at the top of Mementos for everyone else to show up. 

He's brought a book. So far, across half a dozen Mementos visits in two weeks, he's managed to get about a hundred pages into it just while sitting around and waiting for everyone to show up. Nanako has been teasing him for his ability to sit in the middle of another dimension decorated with viscera and _read mystery novels_ , but...

Well, there's been a lot of waiting, he needs _something_ to do. And it's a pretty good book.

He's about two thirds of the way through the book, and the author has started gleefully wiping out secondary characters. Yu has a pretty good idea of who the murderer is, and as the speed of the plot picks up and the narrative starts to move toward the inevitable denouement, he starts to get pretty sucked into it. 

Which is why he doesn't look up right away when he hears the footsteps heading toward him. It's probably Futaba coming with Nanako and Morgana, they're usually the first ones here. Or maybe Haru, since he only hears the one person. She's usually pretty on time. "Hang on a second," Yu says, holding one finger up as he turns a page with the other hand. "I'm _almost_ done with this chapter."

"Yeah, sure. I can wait."

He actually reads another two sentences before he recognizes the voice. His eyes snap upward and he drops the book in surprise that turns into _shock_ as he takes in the sight of either Akira or his ghost standing in front of him. 

(Not a ghost, Yu decides, after a full five seconds of staring. There's too much life in Akira's expression, too much visible enjoyment of Yu's shock)

"Surprise," Akira says, and Yu literally cannot think of a single thing to say in response. For one thing, that would require him to somehow scrape his jaw off the floor, and that just doesn't seem possible right this second. And for another thing, what is he supposed to _say_ to Akira when he just shows up like this? Only half-visible, his eyes almost glowing ( _golden_ ) with excitement and mischief.

In the end, Yu can't think of anything to do but hug him. He doesn't even fully intend to do it, but he just moves forward and suddenly he has his arms wrapped around Akira, relieved to feel him solid, relieved also to feel Akira return the gesture. 

"Do I want to ask why I can see right through you?" Yu asks, when he finally manages to find his voice. "Or about the eyes?"

"Give it another five minutes," Akira says. "I have a feeling you're not going to like the answer, and I don't want to ruin the moment."

Oh no, Yu thinks, even as he can't help smiling. _Of course_ this is how Akira would come back to them. Of course it is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, three chapters ago: Wow I can't wait to get Akira and Lavenza back together!  
> Me, now: how the f*** do I write fluff
> 
> Also, I am strangely tickled by the idea of Yu enjoying mystery novels.


	33. July 9 - July 13

_July 9_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Akira has never seen Mementos as bright as it seems to be today.

It's still the same gross looking place it's always been. It's actually worse now, because Akira is getting to finally see what it means when Lavenza says the Velvet Room is sealed, and _wow_ that's weird. But his reunion with Yu, Rise, and all of the Phantom Thieves more than makes up for all that. His time with Lavenza, Elizabeth, and Jose hasn't exactly been bad, but there's something about the enthusiastic reactions from everyone all at once that just makes him feel like it's _over_. He's finally going home.

There's a lot of shouting and talking over each other as everyone tries to explain everything all at once. Akira is just about as shocked to hear that Dojima had told Sojiro about the metaverse as they are to hear his story about the Velvet Room and the Sea of Souls. Akira tells them basically everything, only keeping back a few of the more personal conversations he'd had with Lavenza, and also the information about where Morgana had come from. The first is... not something he ever wants to talk about to anyone, and the second is something that he feels like Morgana deserves to hear in private.

(He also only touches briefly on his returned memories about the labyrinth--it's not _exactly_ related to anything that has happened recently, and he kind of wants to figure out how to talk to Makoto about the fact that she has a Persona before he does anything else with those memories)

The plan to lure Fake Igor out of the Velvet Room by doing more Thief work is met with enthusiastic agreement. Even Haru, who has every reason in the world to never want to risk going back into a Palace again, is on board with the whole idea. Jose is delighted at being surrounded by so many humans (especially the girls, who seem to have all instantly decided that he is adorable). And Elizabeth, while none of them are paying attention to her, quietly vanishes.

She'll be back, Akira knows. They have a deal.

The weirdest part of all for Akira is that no one else seems to be at all put off by the explanation for why his eyes have changed color. He explains that everything he's been through means that he might not be entirely human anymore, and no one even bats an eye at the idea. He doesn't understand why something that has shaken him so badly barely generated a shrug from his friends.

But there are a hundred other things to talk about, after all, and he doesn't have much time to dwell on this. Akira is genuinely shocked to hear that Dojima had gone to Sojiro and _told him everything_ , and even more shocked that Sojiro hadn't just panicked.

"He wants to come see Mementos," Morgana tells him. "And no one else has gotten around to it yet, so that's probably going to be on you."

"Why does he want to come _here_?" Akira asks.

"He's tired of not being able to understand Morgana, apparently," Futaba says. "We've all been talking to him in front of Sojiro now that he knows about stuff. I think he's just annoyed."

"That's fair," Akira admits. "I'd rather bring him here than one of the Palaces, anyway."

"We don't even know the keywords for any Palaces in Tokyo right now," Yusuke points out. "So this is the only part of the metaverse any of us can get into."

"Speaking of," Ryuji says. "If we're going to keep stealing Treasures to piss this Fake Igor guy off, we should probably hurry up and pick another target, right?"

"I think it can probably wait," Yu says firmly. "I know that's not my decision, but it feels like something that can probably wait until Akira's back in his body again?"

"Oh yeah," Ryuji says, looking over at Akira. "Sorry, man."

Akira shrugs. "I kind of would like to get back to the real world," he admits. "We can start thinking about who might be a good target, and meet up after I'm out of the hospital? However long that takes?"

No one has any argument against this, so... that's that for the day. Akira hangs back while everyone else leaves, until it's only Lavenza, Jose, and himself left behind. He's just--a _little_ wary that things might not work out as easily as Lavenza had made it sound, and if that happens he doesn't necessarily want everyone else to see things going wrong.

"Will you be okay on your own?" he asks Jose.

The boy nods. "I'm always okay," he says. "But... you will come back to visit, won't you?"

"Promise," Akira says. 

Then he turns to Lavenza. She's standing in front of the chained shut Velvet Room door, an expression of undisguised sadness on her face.

Akira has never much enjoyed his time in the Velvet Room, so the main emotion he feels looking at that door is just determination. There's something wrong in the world, and they're going to have to fix it.

Lavenza, on the other hand, is looking at her home. 

"Are you okay?" he asks her.

"Not exactly," she admits. "But if we can chase that imposter out of the Velvet Room, I will be." She takes a breath and turns her back on the Velvet Room door. "It's time to leave. Your spirit is overdue for a reunion with your body."

"I'm ready whenever you are," he tells her.

"Good," she says. "This may be slightly more uncomfortable than what you're used to, just to warn you."

There's a kind of jerk in the fabric of the world, something that throws Akira off balance even though there's no actual, physical movement. He manages to keep his feet, but only barely, and the world blurs and fades and then resolves itself back into the familiar sights of Shibuya Station.

For about a second, Akira takes in the strange sight of himself--still dressed in his metaverse costume, still only half visible--juxtaposed against the familiarity of Shibuya. Lavenza is at his side, still, and there is _something_ calling out to him. It feels like the most powerful sense of nostalgia that he has ever had. It feels like the concept of _home_ all rolled up into one powerful emotion, and Akira doesn't even try to fight it. 

There is a sense of movement, of dissolving and reforming, soul and body rejoining. And then the reassuring weight of his own body, of something that has been missing suddenly being returned to him. He settles into the feeling, comfortable and warm like sinking deeply into a soft bed, and lets his body's unconsciousness reach out to claim his soul.

-//-

_July 9_

_Afternoon_

-//-

> **Dojima**
> 
> Akira's going to wake up today
> 
> You're sure, Yu?
> 
> Not positive. I don't know for sure how long it's going to take. But I talked to his consciousness (?) in the metaverse today, and it's going to be soon
> 
> I'll come back up to the city
> 
> You're sure you can take the time off?
> 
> I was already going to come up tomorrow to get Nanako. I'll be fine to leave a day early
> 
> And I want to see with my own eyes that he's alright

Yu finishes his text conversation with his uncle just as his train pulls into the station at Yongen-Jaya. Futaba and Nanako had both wanted to go straight to the hospital, but Yu had reminded Nanako that she's not actually allowed to be with Akira because of his probation, and that _both_ of them would seem suspicious if they just miraculously showed up right before he wakes up.

So they're going to Yongen-Jaya instead, to wait for the doctors to call Sojiro and give the news officially. 

Yu, the whole group of Phantom Thieves apart from Akira, and _Lavenza_.

Yu can't stop watching her during the trip back. He's never known a resident of the Velvet Room to change or grow the way that she seems to have suddenly grown up, and he's not sure what's behind it. So it's--strange, seeing her like this. She's still definitely Lavenza. But her face has lost the childish roundness he remembers, has sharpened into something older--almost but not _quite_ adult. She's taller too, in a way that might have seemed stretched out and strange if she didn't have a sort of grace to her movements.

And it's not just that she's grown up. It takes Yu a little while to put his finger on exactly what seems so different, but eventually he figures it out. There's something about her that seems just a fraction more _human_ than she has ever been before. A little of the otherworldly stare has gone out of her eyes, a little more color has come into her face. Even the clothes she's wearing now look more normal than anything Yu has seen on a resident of the Velvet Room up to this point. While Lavenza is still dressed in the familiar blue shade that she and her sisters always wear, the skirt and blouse are plain enough that they could have been bought from any store in Tokyo.

She still doesn't quite fit in. She's visibly not Japanese, but she can pass so much more easily for _human_.

He maneuvers among the crowded confines of the train so that he's standing next to her, and they can talk quietly enough to avoid being overheard. "So how worried should I be about Akira?" he asks.

She shakes her head. "I don't know," she says. "He should not have survived what he went through. He _broke_ , Yu. He was in pieces, in the Sea of Souls. And I don't think he realizes how truly small his odds of being able to put himself back together again were. He managed it, because he is more stubborn than anyone I have ever met in my life, but..."

"But?"

"I would not be surprised if that concentrated exposure to so many other consciousnesses would have... rubbed off on him in some way."

"His eyes?" Yu asks. "He said that it means he might not be human anymore."

She nods. "That is the sign that confirms it to me the most," she says. "But only time will tell what exactly that means." She sighs, shakes her head. "And we haven't discussed it, but I believe he would have lost the Persona he had with him before all this happened."

"When you say lost..."

"Any Persona he had recruited, summoned, or fused would have returned to the Sea of Souls while he was there," Lavenza clarifies. "Apart from Arsene, of course. And he is a wild card, so he can still recruit new Persona from the metaverse. But without the Velvet Room he will be significantly handicapped in whatever's going to happen next."

"Great," Yu says. "That's really what we don't need right now."

Lavenza nods. "I know," she says. "But I don't think there's anything we can do about it."

Yu sighs and scrubs his hand over his face. "I guess we'll just have to see how Palaces go from now on," he says. 

"There seems to be no other choice," Lavenza agrees. "Although I'm concerned with the idea of him running straight into another Palace under the imposter's nose, while we're still trying to figure things out."

"Good luck trying to convince Akira not to go running in, though," Yu says.

"I know," Lavenza says, looking deeply troubled. "And a part of me is hoping to be able to convince him to take a more cautious route, but I know him well enough to know that will not change his mind."

"No," Yu agrees. "He won't."

The two of them share a look of complete understanding. As two people that care very deeply for someone that can be _very_ stupid about the types of risks he'll willingly take, Yu can see the exact same worry he's feeling reflected on her face.

"He's already confronted Yaldabaoth once when he knew perfectly well that he shouldn't have," Lavenza says. "I'm scared that he will do it again."

"We have to make sure he doesn't," Yu says. "Somehow."

"Somehow," she echoes.

Easier said than done, of course, and Yu is almost grateful that there's no more time to talk before the train pulls into the Yongen-Jaya station. They all troop down the street toward Leblanc, where Sojiro takes one look at the whole group together, and raises his eyebrows.

"What went wrong this time?" he asks Futaba.

"Akira's going to wake up soon," she reports. "We wanted to come back here so we'd hear when the doctors call you about it."

"Did you tell Dad yet?" Nanako asks Yu.

"Yeah," Yu says. "He's coming up today."

Sojiro is nodding. "It'll be good to have him back to normal," he says. He doesn't say anything else, doesn't even question that they can predict when Akira's going to wake up from his coma, but Yu thinks he's reading some real relief in the older man's voice. Yu wonders if he's relieved at the idea of Akira being okay, or if he just wants his normal life back, without constant trips back and forth to the hospital.

"Akira doesn't know what normal even is," Futaba says. "We're not getting back to normal at _all_ , Sojiro."

"I'm getting that idea," Sojiro says. "Yeah."

Before he can say anything else, his phone rings. Every single eye in the cafe turns to look at Sojiro as he picks up. The room is so quiet that Yu can actually hear the quiet sound of the voice on the other end of the line. It's not enough to pick up every detail, but from the few words Sojiro says, and from the tone of the other person's voice, it's obvious that this is good news.

Finally, Sojiro hangs up, shaking his head. "I don't know how you all knew about this--"

"We saw his consciousness when we went into Mementos today," Futaba explains.

Sojiro looks like he deeply regrets asking. "Anyway," he says. "He's not awake yet, but apparently he's showing signs that he will be soon. His doctor's asking me to come down."

"We're all coming too," Futaba informs him.

"And Dad," Nanako adds. "I know we're not supposed to, but..." She looks at Yu, who nods. There's no way that any of them is going to be anywhere else when Akira finally wakes up again.

-//-

_????_

-//-

There's something unbelievably disorienting to go from being pure spirit to suddenly having a body again. Akira fights it, but he feels heavy and awkward and not at all used to the weight of his body, and it takes him what feels like a very long time to gather his confused consciousness enough to actually open his eyes.

When he finally manages it, his vision is blurry, the bright lights _hurt,_ and his brain feels like mush. There's someone familiar sitting in the chair next to his bed, and Akira fumbles awkwardly for comprehension as he squints in that direction.

"...dad?" he mumbles at last.

The blurry figure leans forward, resolves itself into Dojima.

In any other circumstance, Akira thinks he could have handled it. But right now, confused and in pain and half in shock from the sheer confusion of having a body again, confronted with one of the people he cares for most and had _not_ expected to see today, he cries. He doesn't know if it's relief or pain or some other more complicated mix of emotions, but whatever the reason is, he _cries_. 

(He doesn't have any logical reason for it. Everything had gone right, he's back in his own body, but--)

(It's been a lot, lately. Maybe it's waking up in a hospital, maybe it's just being back in a body with _hormones_ again, but either way it just hits him all at once)

It's not a very impressive cry. It starts out quiet but morphs quickly into an ugly sort of sobbing, the kind that's almost closer to hyperventilating than to tears, and if it had been anyone else sitting by his bed when he woke up, Akira wouldn't have given into it. But this is Dojima, who is as much a parent to him by this point as the ones he'd been born to. There's no way that he could have woken up with anyone else that would have made him feel safer.

Dojima stays close while Akira lets it all out. He puts his hand on Akira's back and Akira leans into it, lets everything that's happened lately work through him until finally the sobbing stops.

"Better?" Dojima asks.

Akira presses his hands against his eyes for a few seconds before he answers, then lets out a shaky breath and finally nods. "I think I almost died," he says. "And it's just kind of--hitting me."

"You did almost die," Dojima says. "Yu tells me that you did something stupid."

"Really stupid," Akira agrees. "But also the right thing to do."

"You're sure?" Dojima asks.

"Yeah," Akira says, and Dojima nods and then doesn't ask any more questions. Which is good, partially because Akira doesn't even know where to start in explaining, and also because he has plenty of questions himself. "So where are we, exactly?"

"Hospital," Dojima says. "They called an ambulance when you wouldn't wake up. It was about a week in the ICU, and then another week here."

"Right," Akira says. "Yu said it was a while, when I saw him in Mementos..." He raises a shaking hand, and rubs at his face. "Did he call you?"

"He did," Dojima says. "I was up here for a while anyway, just in case, but I couldn't take any more time off work. Especially since none of us are supposed to be with you."

"But you _were_ here," Akira says. "For a while."

"Just in case," Dojima says again.

Just in case he was going to die, Akira assumes that means. "I'm sorry," Akira says. "I know it must have been really tough for you."

"I could have done without these past two weeks," Dojima agrees, with straightforward bluntness. "I think we've all had some sleepless nights lately because of you."

"I'm sorry," Akira says again. "And I'm going to try not to ever need to do anything like that again, but--it really was important."

Dojima nods, and gives him another pat on the back as he stands up. "I'm sure the doctors are going to be coming in to see you soon," he says. "And I'm technically not supposed to be here."

Akira makes a face. He hasn't had to think about his probation the entire time he was at the bottom of Mementos, and it had honestly been kind of nice. 

"Your friend Ann knows some people here, apparently," Dojima says. "So I guess she convinced them to help give us a few minutes when you woke up, but I'd like to be out of here before anyone has a chance to come in here."

"Sure," Akira says. "I'll be fine on my own."

Dojima laughs at the (apparently very poor) job he's doing at keeping the disappointment off his face. "I know it's going to be hard for you," he says. "But you'll get through it. And you know that if you ever really need us--"

"You'll be there," Akira says. "Yeah. I do know that."

"And there are a lot of other people here that you _are_ allowed to see right now," Dojima tells him. "I know I mentioned your friend Ann's here, but she's not the only one. You're going to have more visitors than you know what to do with soon enough."

"Thanks," Akira says, and as Dojima heads out of the room, he does genuinely feel a little bit better. It is viscously unfair to have ten minutes with Dojima, and then be told that he's not going to get to see him again. But at least he's not going to be alone. 

He's not even going to be alone for thirty seconds, it turns out, because the door has barely had a chance to close behind Dojima before it opens again. And this time, it's Lavenza slipping inside.

Akira's eyes go wide, and three thoughts hit him, all at the exact same moment.

First, s _he's here, she's really back, she's in the real world._

Second, _I can't believe she came to the hospital._

And third _, I really wish I wasn't wearing a hospital gown for this._

"What are you doing here?" he asks. His voice is still a little hoarse from his recent cry, and he's hopes she'll just think it's because he's been in a coma for so long.

"When we were in Mementos," Lavenza says. "You asked if I would be there when you woke up."

"I..."

She smiles. "It seemed important to let Dojima be there first," she says. "But I... wanted to come and see you."

"I'm glad you did," Akira says. 

For a second there's silence, and she smiles, just a little nervously. "I didn't have anywhere else to go right away anyway," she says.

"Oh right," he says. "Because the Velvet Room is..."

There's quiet between them. Akira is trying desperately to figure out where a safe place would be for her to stay, but honestly? He has no idea.

"Your friend Haru offered to let me stay with her for a while," Lavenza tells him. "Apparently she's on her own now, and doesn't want to stay in an empty home any longer. I might take her up on that offer, so don't worry about me."

"What makes you think I don't want to worry about you?" Akira asks.

She smiles, and glances back over her shoulder toward the door. "Try not to this time," she tells him. "I can handle this on my own. And think your doctor will be here soon, so try and worry about _that_."

"I'm fine," Akira says immediately.

"You have been unconscious for _two weeks_ ," she says. "You are not fine, Trickster."

Akira makes a face, but she's right. "I just can't believe I had to spend all that time in Mementos sleeping and trying to get my strength back," he says. "And now I have to do it all over again in the real world."

"Just think," Lavenza says. "The more you recover, the faster you can get back to raiding Palaces and trying to dethrone a false god."

"Is that what we're calling Fake Igor now?" Akira asks. "Because that's a little intimidating."

"Does it make you want to fight him any less?" Lavenza asks.

He opens his mouth, then actually thinks about the question and admits, "Maybe a little bit more."

She gives him a look like this is exactly what she'd expected him to say, and then has to quickly vacate the room as a doctor comes in and basically kicks her out. Akira watches her go, just in the few seconds before the doctor comes at him with questions and tests and the hundred things he apparently has to go through just because he's been in a coma for two weeks.

A month ago, he'd been baiting Akechi in a TV interview and gearing up for Okumura's Palace. Now he's waking up from a coma, possibly not entirely human anymore, and getting ready to dethrone a false god. Things have _really_ taken a turn for the weird up lately.

(His mind buzzes with thoughts and plans, over the next few hours and into the next couple days. As friends come to visit, as doctors poke and prod and shake their heads over the coma that they _still_ can't explain, Akira has a lot of time to think)

-//-

_July 11_

_Midnight_

-//-

> **Yu**
> 
> Why isn't anyone else worried about the fact that I might not be human anymore?
> 
> Why aren't you asleep? It's the middle of the night
> 
> And you've been out of your coma for all of two days. You should still be resting
> 
> I've been sleeping all day, I'm tired of sleeping
> 
> And I'm being serious, why isn't anyone worried?
> 
> Why would we be worried?
> 
> BECAUSE I MIGHT NOT BE HUMAN

Akira stares down at his phone, at the all caps message he's just sent Yu. He barely recognizes it as something he could have sent himself, but the thing is... the thing is that it's been two days since he woke up in the hospital. The doctors have run all their tests, and they've come back with inconclusive and unsatisfactory results. 

There's apparently nothing wrong with him that could have caused his coma, which doesn't really surprise Akira all that much. He already knows that his coma is because of what had happened in the Velvet Room. It would have been pretty weird if the doctors _could_ have run a test that would pick up on the fact that his soul had been temporarily separated from his body.

But there are other anomalies, apparently. Things that couldn't have contributed to the coma, but aren't-- _quite_ right. Maybe it has something to do with his potential loss of humanity, maybe not. Akira doesn't exactly have any medical knowledge, so he doesn't know what any of it means. All he knows is that there's _something_ wrong with his tests, Lavenza is worried, and his eyes are still the same golden yellow they'd been before he came back to his body.

That's the part that unnerves him the most, honestly. His eyes, since coming back to the real world, have faded into a kind of golden hazel, something that would look--to anyone that doesn't know any better--like a passably normal eye color.

But Akira _does_ know better. He knows that when he'd been in the metaverse, his eyes had glowed like Lavenza's do, and he's a little afraid that the next time he goes back there, they'll go right back to that. Earlier in the afternoon, he'd stood for long minutes in front of the bathroom mirror and been unable to meet his own gaze. 

(He remembers when he'd faced his Shadow down at eleven years old, a boy with his face and glowing yellow eyes)

His phone screen lights up with an incoming call, and Akira picks up.

"Do you need to take a deep breath?" Yu asks. "And talk this over?"

"I need to know why I'm the only one freaking out about this," Akira says. "I feel like I'm going crazy, Yu. I might not be human anymore, and everyone's shrugging it off like it's no big deal. _Why_?"

He's holding his phone tight, and has to force himself to relax before he actually hurts himself.

After a long pause, Yu sighs. "This is just a guess," he says. "Because I can't speak for everyone. But I've been thinking a lot lately about Inaba, and how I first heard about the Trickster."

"Uh oh," Akira says, before he can stop himself. "Am I going to like this story?"

"Akira..."

"Sorry, sorry."

"I heard Margaret and Igor talking about the Trickster in the Velvet Room," Yu says. "And I had _just_ learned that the TV World even existed. We didn't know anything. I mean--we didn't know _anything_ , Akira. And I remember sitting in the Velvet Room, no real idea what it is or how it works, and here they are talking about someone called a Trickster. And my first thought was... you know, _oh great, another weird new TV World thing._ And I thought that for a really long time."

"I remember," Akira says.

"No," Yu says. "I mean--everything I thought I knew about the Trickster was based on this idea that he was something from the metaverse, like a Shadow or a Persona, something like that. And then it was you and I had to completely recalibrate what I thought, but..."

"But?"

"But the way you were, in the TV World, the way you moved around in there, the way you fought, the way you thought about that world... you just fit into it. I don't think I've ever seen anyone else that _fit_ like you do, who loves it like you do."

Akira feels something cold in the pit of his stomach. He... doesn't like hearing this, but his tongue is heavy and he doesn't know what to say.

"And I mean look at your team here," Yu goes on. I've gotten to know the Phantom Thieves a little bitter while you've been in your coma, and that's how they see you. I mean, especially the ones that you met out here--I think a lot of them saw you come charging in and taking on Shadows that they couldn't handle, and they thought--this is your world."

"Oh," Akira says, softly.

For a long time, there's just silence between them, as Akira tries to pull himself together. Eventually, he says, "I mean... I _have_ been fighting in the metaverse for a long time, I can't exactly argue that. It's basically been a third of my life now, and it means a lot to me. I love the metaverse. I love fighting Shadows. And now that I'm here, and with the Phantom Thieves, I feel like I'm doing... I don't know, what I'm supposed to be doing with my life." He takes a deep breath. "But it's supposed to be a _human_ life, Yu. Almost everyone I care about is human." Lavenza excepted, but Lavenza is... she's made it clear that she's not going to be around forever.

(Would he have felt differently, if he didn't know she was leaving as soon as all this is over?)

(Probably. It would have been more of an adventure and less of an unknown terror, if he wasn't figuring it out alone)

"I don't know what this means for me," he says.

"I don't either," Yu says. "But I think that if anyone can handle it, Akira, it _is_ going to be you."

Akira chews on this for a little while. Yu usually has a way of making him feel better, but this time for whatever reason it's just... it's not working. "Yu," he says. "Remember how I said... when I was talking about almost dying in the Sea of Souls?"

"Yeah," Yu says.

"I wouldn't have made it through that without Arsene," Akira says. "I remember breaking, and I remember this really horrible pain, and then after a while there was his voice. He started... I don't know. Pulling memories back to me, showing me things, letting me... I don't know, relive things. He kept on pushing me, and just... asking me if I was really ready to let go of all the things I would lose if I just gave up. And there were all these memories, all these people that I didn't want to lose."

He sits with that for a long second, before working up to the next part.

"Yu," he says. "I saw my parents again. I haven't seen them since I was ten years old. And this was just a memory, but it was _real._ I got to see them again, and..."

"And?"

"And I guess since then I've just been wondering if they ever really knew me," Akira says. "Because--I guess because of what you were talking about. How there's so much of me tied up in the metaverse. And now I might not even be human anymore, and it's just like--I don't know if there's anything left that they would even recognize."

Yu lets out a sigh that crackles over the cell phone speaker. "When you first awakened Arsene," he says. "You knew him, right?"

"What?"

"That feeling," Yu says. "Of something that was absolutely _you_. You recognized him because he was you, right?"

"Yeah," Akira says. "Of course."

"And he's still with you," Yu goes on. "Still a part of you?"

"You know he is," Akira says. "He's the only Persona I've never even thought about fusing." And never will, even if the Velvet Room had still been open, and that had still been an option.

"Then that tells me that there's something in you that hasn't changed and _won't_ change," Yu says. "There's something at the core of you that's always been the same, and your parents _would_ have known that. And if your parents never got to know you as well as you want them to... that doesn't have anything to do with the things you've been through, or whether you're still human. It's just because they died when you were eleven years old. It sucks and it's not fair, but even if you'd never found the metaverse, they would have missed a lot of your life."

"But I would have still been human," Akira says. "It would have been different."

"Maybe," Yu says. "But there's no way to ever know for sure."

Akira closes his eyes. "Yeah," he says. "I guess... I guess you're right." He scrubs at his face, feeling suddenly tired and sad. "I don't know. Maybe it's just being here. I hate hospitals, I don't like being here alone in the middle of the night. It'll be better when I'm out of here."

"Do you know when they're going to discharge you?" Yu asks.

"Probably tomorrow or the next day," Akira says. "Apparently they're waiting on a couple more tests to come back first."

"You'll feel better when you're out of there," Yu tells him. "And honestly... I'm thinking you might want to try and find someone you can talk to. You're going through a lot, and I don't necessarily know how to help with all of it."

Akira snorts. "Sure," he says. "Find me a therapist that knows about the metaverse, and I'll go talk to them."

"Fair point," Yu laughs. "But at least try and get some sleep tonight, okay? I don't know everything, but I do know that sitting up in the middle of the night worrying isn't going to do you any good."

"And I bet you want to get some sleep too, right?"

"Some of us have class in the morning, Akira."

Akira hangs up, but as soon as he does, he regrets it. He hates the tight feeling of solitude clawing at his chest, and there's absolutely no chance that he's going to get any sleep any time soon.

So he gets up and goes for a walk.

He's probably not supposed to be doing that, but it's not like anyone's explicitly told him that he needs to stay in his room, so out he goes. The hospital is quiet this time of night, at least around here. Akira skulks around, ducking out of sight whenever it looks like he's about to run into someone.

His wandering eventually takes him to a room with a nameplate outside that makes him pause. He recognizes the name, but has no idea what she'd be doing here.

-//-

_July 12_

_Before School_

-//-

> **Akira**
> 
> Hey Ann, weird question, but has Kawakami been in school lately?
> 
> Like our homeroom teacher Kawakami?
> 
> Yeah
> 
> No, she's been sick or something I guess
> 
> There's a rumor going around that it's exhaustion, but you know how reliable rumors are at this school
> 
> Malicious and unreliable
> 
> Yeah. Why'd you ask, anyway?
> 
> I think she's in the hospital here too. I saw a room with her name on it when I was wandering around last night
> 
> Weird coincidence
> 
> Anyway, class is about to start. Text you later?

She slips her phone away without waiting for an answer. Exams are starting in two days (for everyone except Akira, who will probably have to make it up whenever he comes back to school), and she is not at all confident about being able to pass them. 

Being a Phantom Thief is _terrible_ for anyone that actually wants to pass their classes. It's fine for Ryuji, who probably would have failed anyway, but Ann would really like to not end up at the bottom of the class rankings.

So she pays more attention than usual as the teachers go through last minute review sessions, and by the time lunch rolls around, she feels like her brain is about to burst. She desperately needs a break from studying, and so she heads up to the roof, with the general idea that Ryuji will probably doing his usual last minute _oh no what am I going to do the exams are in two days_ complaining (which is grating to hear from someone that's not going to spend any time at _all_ studying), but Haru might be willing to talk about something else.

Unfortunately for Ann, she finds Makoto on the roof instead.

"Sorry," Ann says, already starting to back up and disappear down the stairs. "I was looking for Haru, but I can go check somewhere else."

"She just ran down to her classroom to get something she forgot," Makoto says. "You can wait up here if you want."

Ann hesitates (Makoto _also_ seems like she's someone that's going to spend her lunch break talking about exams), but doesn't see any clear way to get out of this without seeming rude. "Sure," she says. "Thanks."

She picks an empty desk (one facing away from the part of the roof that Shiho had jumped from a few months ago), and picks at her lunch while Makoto works on her own. 

"So I heard Akira's out of the hospital?" Makoto asks eventually.

"Not yet," Ann says. "The doctors are saying today or tomorrow, apparently."

"But he's awake now, at least?"

"He's awake," Ann agrees. "Just going a little stir crazy, I think. He texted me this morning asking me about our homeroom teacher, for some reason?"

"Odd," Makoto says.

"Well, this is Akira we're talking about," Ann points out.

Haru comes up at this point, holding something Ann can only describe as being vaguely garden shaped, and waves hello to Ann as she kneels down near the garden plot and starts to work. "What are you doing up here?" she asks. "Is something wrong?"

"No," Ann says. "I just wanted to talk to someone about something other than exams for a few minutes."

Haru nods, and Makoto sort of laughs. 

"She's already told me that this is a strictly no-exam zone," the student council president explains. 

"So you're safe here," Haru tells her.

"Great," Ann says. "That's exactly what I wanted to hear. How have things been with Lavenza at your place, Haru?"

"It's been nice, actually," Haru says. "It was too quiet when I was all by myself."

"Who's Lavenza?" Makoto asks.

"A friend of Akira's that came to see him when he got sick," Haru says, repeating the half-true cover story they've come up with to explain Lavenza. "She's from out of town, so since I'm alone now, I invited her to come stay with me while she's in the city."

"What's she like?" Ann asks, leaning forward a little on her desk. "I know she's from, um... _very far_ out of town."

"It's hard to get a good read on her, actually," Haru says, pausing in her work and giving this some thought. "She's very quiet, a lot of the time? And she seems sad."

"She's probably worried about Akira, if she's his friend," Makoto suggests.

"Probably," Ann agrees. 

"I've been trying to cheer her up," Haru says, which Ann thinks just goes to show what kind of a person Haru really is. Most people who had just lost a father wouldn't be so concerned about helping someone else to feel better after they'd just lost their own father. Haru, apparently unaware of the twinge of sympathy this comment has brought to Ann, continues. "We usually have someone come out to help with cleaning and things," she says. "But I haven't really wanted to have too many people around since... well, since the funeral."

"Of course not," Makoto says quietly.

"And Lavenza doesn't have much experience in housework either," Haru continues, her voice sounding more cheerful again now. "So we've been trying to figure things out."

"How's it going?" Ann asks.

"Laundry has been a disaster," Haru admits. "I may need to replace some of my clothes."

"It's been three days," Ann says.

"I know," Haru says. "It's going to be quite a learning curve."

Ann shares a concerned look with Makoto.

"Maybe we can come over some time and help," Ann suggests. "My parents travel a lot, so I know how to do most things around the house."

Makoto nods. "It's just me and my sister at home," she says. "And Sae works long hours, so I've done my share of housework too."

"That would be great," Haru says, and then when Makoto turns away for a second, she mouths _'Can she meet Lavenza?'_ in Ann's direction.

Ann shrugs expansively and mouths _'Maybe?'_ back at her.

"Well this should be interesting," Haru says out loud. "Thank you both."

"We're friends," Makoto tells Haru.

The rest of lunch passes relatively peacefully. Ann doesn't contribute much to the conversation, instead focusing on her lunch, and on considering Makoto. She'd never imagined that she'd learn to like her, especially after Makoto had figured her out as a Phantom Thief (it still smarts a little that Makoto had figured _her_ out before Ryuji). But the hospital visit had started to make things a little less tense, and really... maybe she's really not all that bad.

-//-

_July 12_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Akira spends most of the day wandering around the hospital, because it is at least better than lying in bed staring at the ceiling. It's official by now that he'll be discharged from the hospital tomorrow. His tests have come back with a results that boil down to _not normal in a way that doesn't seem actively dangerous_ , which Akira has spent most of today trying not to think about too hard.

That's exactly what he's doing now, actually, as he does laps around the hallways near his room. It's not working very well, right up until the moment that he turns a corner and runs into his homeroom teacher.

She takes a step back, opens her mouth, and only then seems to recognize him.

"Kurusu," she says. "I guess you really were sick, then. Everyone thought you were faking."

This hits Akira as vaguely offensive--he's been in a coma for two weeks, does she think he'd been skipping school just for fun? "Yeah," he says. "I'm supposed to be discharged tomorrow, but uh..." he shrugs. "I've been in here since the end of last month."

She's dressed as a patient too, and Akira just barely manages to bite his tongue before asking what she's in for. He doesn't really want to talk about his coma, so it wouldn't really be fair for him to start asking what's going on with her.

"Then I guess I'll see you back in class soon," she says, not looking too enthusiastic about it. "I'm going to be discharged later today." She's very definitely not looking at him as she says, "It's just a bad cold, nothing serious.

"I wasn't going to ask," Akira says truthfully.

"Hmm," Kawakami says, and she gives him a quick up and down look which seems to confirm to her that he's not much of a threat. Akira (who has had plenty of practice looking innocent--it just so happens that his time he actually _hasn't_ done anything wrong) sort of half-smiles, and turns a little so that his glasses will keep her from getting a decent look at his eyes. 

"Do you happen to know if there's a vending machine around here somewhere?" she asks. "I need something that isn't hospital food."

"That way," Akira says immediately, because he's been doing laps of the halls for a while now, and making mental maps of convoluted floorplans is a skill he's picked over the course of raiding four Palaces. Turns out it's not something his brain can just shut off at this point, even in the real world.

"Thanks," Kawakami says, and they go their separate ways. It should have been the end of the whole incident, except that Akira does another lap of the halls and--as he's heading past the room he'd noticed last night with Kawakami's name on it--he hears part of a heated conversation coming out through the open door. Apparently Kawakami's finished her vending machine run and gone back to her room.

"...can't believe that you would be trying to get out of paying us," an angry man's voice says.

"I just had to take a few days off," Kawakami's voice answers. "I wasn't trying to--"

"Everything you did," a woman's voice says. "And now you can't even be bothered to make payments on time? We had to track you down to the hospital, and now you're saying that you still don't even have the payment from last month?"

"I'll get it for you," Kawakami says. "I'll ask for extra shifts in my second job, I'll have the double payment ready by the end of this month."

"You better," the man says. "Or else how do you think that school you're working at is going to like hearing that one of their teachers is working a second job? And at a call service, of all things?"

Okay, that is not a thing that Akira had been expecting to hear today. 

"I said that I'd get you the money," Kawakami says, her words barely audible.

"Our precious child died because of you," the woman says. "If he hadn't been so distracted by your _study_ sessions, do you think he would still have been hit by that car?"

Akira decides that they are well past the point that he is comfortable listening to this conversation continue. He doesn't know exactly what's going on, but it's pretty obvious that there's some kind of blackmail going on, and Kawakami doesn't _like_ him so this is probably going to get him in trouble, but what else is new?

He takes a step forward, putting himself half in the room and still half in the hallway, and intentionally tenses to make himself seem nervous and uncertain. "Hey," he says, and instantly all three people in the room--Kawakami, and an unpleasant looking middle aged couple--turn to him. "I don't want to interrupt," he says, keeping his eye firmly turned away from Kawakami so he won't see her reaction. He's hoping that whoever these two are, they're just going to assume that he's another patient that had just wandered into the situation. "But I heard shouting in here, and I wondered if anyone needs help...?"

He doesn't get an answer, but the couple doesn't stick around either. Maybe they don't want to keep blackmailing Kawakami now that there's a witness around to hear it, which would be great since that had been his goal coming in here. Either way, they clear out and Akira is left with Kawakami giving him the expected death glare.

"How much of that did you hear?" she asks.

Way more than he'd wanted to. 

"Not much," he says.

It's a lie, obviously, but not one that he puts much effort into. He'd obviously heard enough to think it was worth interrupting. Kawakami hears the half-hearted lie and jumps to the--correct--conclusion that he'd heard most of it. She puts her face in her hands, mumbling something that is completely unintelligible. After several seconds, she takes a deep breath and looks back up at him. "Look," she says flatly. "My second job is _not_ a call service."

"Uh," Akira says.

"It's just a maid service," she says. "And there's nothing illegal about it, I'd just... rather not have everyone know."

"And I'm not planning to tell anyone," Akira says quickly. His imagination is already throwing up mental images of Kawakami in a maid uniform, and he could _really_ have done without that. He sort of wants to just walk backwards out of her hospital room and never think about this ever again, if he can possibly get away with that.

"Good," Kawakami says. "Then you can just get out of here, alright?"

She looks so absolutely spent that Akira doesn't even want to argue. Kawakami might not be the most supportive homeroom teacher in the world, at least not toward him, but if her worst quality is that she doesn't really engage with her students, that's not as bad as it could be. There's no way she deserves to have her second job as a maid spread around Shujin.

(Ann had said there's a rumor going around that Kawakami's out of school because of exhaustion)

(She's working two jobs to pay that couple off for something, and it sounds an awful lot like blackmail)

He hesitates in the doorway, and asks, "Who were those two, anyway?"

"None of your business," Kawakami says.

"No," he says. "But I'm just curious."

She doesn't have any reason to actually answer, he knows, so he's a little surprised when she actually does. Maybe she's worried that if she doesn't say anything, he actually _will_ start spreading the whole maid thing around at school. "They're Toshio and Hiromi Takase," she mutters. "They were the guardians of a student of mine at the school I taught at before I came to Shujin, we met back then. It's no big deal."

"I believe you," Akira lies. "And I'm not going to tell anyone, don't worry about that."

"It's really nothing," Kawakami says, 

If it was no big deal, Akira doesn't think she'd be so insistent about making him believe it. And he doesn't think she'd be working herself into the hospital so she can pay them off. Either _she's_ done something wrong or _they_ have, and it takes him all of fifteen seconds once he's back in his own room to pull up the metanav and confirm that they're the ones with Shadows in Mementos. So whatever else is going on, it's not hard to jump to the conclusion that she's somehow their victim.

> **Yu**
> 
> Hey, I just wanted to check in on you after last night. Are you doing okay?
> 
> Lots better, thanks
> 
> Was it just being alone in the middle of the night?
> 
> Partly
> 
> But then also I found out my homeroom teacher is in this hospital too, and there's this couple harassing her?
> 
> And they have Shadows in Mementos!
> 
> So... you're feeling better because you found some trouble?
> 
> Yeah
> 
> Should have known
> 
> :)

-//-

_July 13_

_Early morning_

-//-

Lavenza wakes, breathing hard and confused. For a moment she doesn't know where she is or why, and then gradually--as they have every morning for the past few days--the details come back to her.

She is in the real world. She is herself, she is _Lavenza,_ not Caroline or Justine.

She has been asleep. 

It's cold in Haru's guest bedroom, even this close to summer, and a part of Lavenza instinctively wants to turn over, pull the blankets up tight around her, and wait for daylight and warmth. But that would be inviting sleep again, and dreams, and the return of her nightmares.

There is no sleep in the Velvet Room, which is half a dream itself. There are _many_ things in the real world that are not needed in the Velvet Room, and now that it is sealed and Lavenza is left to find a life for herself in the real world, she is not finding the adjustment to be seamless. The nightmares--memories, mostly, twisted and unhappy relivings of the moment she'd been split into two--are the worst of it. But there are many parts of life here that it will take her some time to get used to.

She pulls a blanket from the bed, drapes it around herself, lets it settle over her shoulders as she slips out of the bedroom into the common space outside. 

(The blanket is a pale green)

Haru is still asleep, and Lavenza has been paying attention enough to know that today is the first day of her school exams. Judging from the amount of effort and late night studying she's put into her preparations, they're important to her. It would be inconsiderate at best to start making noise and wake her too early.

So instead Lavenza sits by a window facing East, watching the first hints of sunrise as the light filters through the Tokyo city skyline. The light falls over Lavenza's hands on her lap, and her finger playing idly with the edge of the blanket. 

Green, against her skin. Green after a lifetime of blue.

She's spent time in the real world in the past. Not much. But she's visited. Five years ago, she had visited _often_. In Inaba, after all the mysteries had been solved and there was no urgency left, Lavenza had visited Akira just to--see him. She'd learned much of what she knows about the world because of what he'd told and shown her, which.... well, which she knows to take with a grain of salt. He sometimes sees things in strange ways, and is not the most reliable narrator of his own world. She will never learn what _normal_ means from him, in any case.

Maybe that's something she's going to have to discover on her own, now that she has nowhere to go but the real world. Well--nowhere she _wants_ to go, other than the real world. She could have followed Elizabeth, into the voids where she seeks her own guest. But that would have meant leaving with her duties undone, and Lavenza is not willing to do that. So reality will be her home for the next few...

Weeks? Months?

The worst of it is having no purpose. There is no Velvet Room, and so no place for her and no way to help. If she wants to be a part of whatever is going to happen next, she is going to have to make a place for herself. No more standing by and waiting.

(She has _waited_ for the day when Akira would come to the Velvet Room as a guest. She had looked forward to playing her part within that room, for him)

A noise behind her alerts Lavenza to the fact that Haru is awake and has left her room. She turns and half-smiles a good morning. Haru is in a hurry, running late, worried about her upcoming exams. There isn't much time for conversation, to Lavenza's relief. They get along well enough, considering that they have only known each other a bare handful of days, but Lavenza is not at all willing to share any of her thoughts yet.

Haru, on her way out of the door, reminds Lavenza that Akira will be released from the hospital that afternoon, as if Lavenza could have forgotten. And then Haru is gone, leaving Lavenza alone with too many thoughts and not enough to do. She is grateful to have somewhere to stay, of course, but--

It has been a long few days, and Lavenza is sure that there are more of them on the way. 

But at least Akira will be released soon. That, Lavenza is sure, will make things better. She isn't sure in which _specific_ ways it will make things better, only that the chances of her being bored while Akira is around are significantly lower than they are right now, with him still in the hospital.

It's getting warmer in the room, and Lavenza stands, letting the blanket slip from her shoulders now that the early chill has been burned away by the July sun coming in through the windows. For a few long moments she considers what her next movement should be, and then nods decisively to herself. She gathers the blanket, folds and returns it to its place on the bed, and then leaves the apartment. Akira is being released from the hospital today, and she has no doubt that the first place he'll go is home. 

Tokyo is a large city. Lavenza has not seen much of it, and she knows almost no one that lives here. She wants to see the one that matters the most to her. 

(She's more than tired of being shut up in one place, and how hard can it be to travel from one part of the city to another?)

(Very, she finds out when she actually tries it for herself--it is _very_ difficult to travel through the real world through mundane methods, and if she hadn't happened to run into a kind older woman who assumes she is a tourist and helps her get where she needs to be, Lavenza might have been lost for quite some time)

It takes time for her to travel, and by the time she reaches his home, it is later than she'd hoped it would be. He is already there, she knows that when she is still several streets away. Even in this strange situation he is still her guest, and she can feel him as easily here as she had been able to years ago when they first met in the TV World. 

She walks in the front door and there he is, sitting at the counter with a plate of food in front of him, looking only slightly less gaunt than he had when he woke up in the hospital a few days ago. 

Some of the loneliness that has haunted her since they last saw each other fades away.

-//-

_July 13_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Sojiro had come alone to get Akira from the hospital, to Akira's surprise and despite Futaba's protests. He'd apparently convinced her in the end only by telling her there'd probably be a ton of paperwork to get through, and that there would be plenty of time for them to talk later.

Akira's kind of grateful for that. Sojiro hasn't said anything to him ( _not one single word_ ) to him about the Phantom Thieves since he first woke up, and he'd rather have this conversation while the two of them are alone.

Sure enough, as soon as they're alone in Sojiro's car, his guardian gives him a look.

"So," he says. "When we talked back at the beginning of the year, and I told you to stay away from Futaba, what part of that conversation made you think I would be okay with her being recruited into your gang of multidimensional thieves?"

"No part of it," Akira says. "That's... I mean, that's why we didn't tell you."

He's not going to beat around the bush with Sojiro. He doesn't think his guardian would appreciate any kind of double talk.

"And the Phantom Thieves weren't even a thing before I met Futaba," he continues. "I really wasn't trying to lure her into anything dangerous."

"I hear you've been fighting these Shadow things since you were a kid," Sojiro says.

Akira glances over at him, but Sojiro isn't even looking in his direction, focused on the road ahead. That makes the conversation a little bit easier. "I've been fighting Shadows," he says. "Yeah. But I didn't think I was going to find them here like this. Futaba and I honestly found the app together, we figured it out together, and--yeah, I guess there was a point where I could have asked her to back off and stay out of it. But it's Futaba. She wasn't going to just give up."

Sojiro grunts.

"And I am going to keep her safe," Akira says. "Whatever else happens, I'm going to make sure nothing bad happens to her."

"I find that a little hard to believe," Sojiro says. "Considering that you've been in the hospital yourself for two weeks."

"That's different," Akira says. He turns away so that he can't even see Sojiro in his peripheral vision, and stares out the window instead. It's sort of weird, seeing Tokyo from this angle. He's so used to getting everywhere on foot or by train. "I'll push myself as hard as I need to, but I'm not going to let--"

"Kid," Sojiro interrupts. "Stop talking for one second and listen to me." He waits a second to make sure that Akira actually is listening, then says, "I accept the fact that I'm not going to be able to talk you or Futaba out of this," he says. "I've been talking to a lot of people recently. And I've been hearing a lot about why all this is so important. I don't think that I could stop you all from doing this even if I wanted to. But that doesn't mean I don't have opinions."

Akira's sure that he does.

"What just happened to you is a wakeup call," Sojiro says. "You're not invulnerable. You can get hurt. _Anyone_ can get hurt, doing what all of you do. I don't want you to sit there and make a promise to protect Futaba that you aren't going to be able to keep. You got yourself hurt this time. Maybe next time it'll be someone else. So don't tell me that you're the going to put yourself in danger to keep other people safe. _That doesn't work,_ and I'm not interested in hearing empty promises."

"What... do you want to hear, then?" Akira asks.

"I want you to tell me that you're going to be less stupid next time," Sojiro says. "I don't know anything about this Persona thing that all of you are wrapped up in. But I know how teams work. I want to hear that you're going to watch each other's backs, and be _smarter_ from now on."

"Okay," Akira says quietly.

"Is that an okay because you're being lectured, or an okay because you're listening?" Sojiro asks.

"Both?" He risks a glance at Sojiro, who looks unsurprisingly unimpressed by this answer. "I'm listening," he says. "Honestly."

"Good," Sojiro says. "I don't want to see either of you hurt or in the hospital again."

He doesn't say that he was worried, but his fingers are tight on the steering wheel, and Akira can read between the lines. 

"I'm sorry," he says. "For worrying everyone. And for--well, I'm _not_ sorry for the Phantom Thieves. But I am sorry you had to find out the way that you did."

Sojiro doesn't even answer this, which Akira figures probably means that he should stay quiet for a while too. The rest of the drive back to Leblanc is quiet and awkward, but after Sojiro parks the car he turns so that he's fully facing Akira.

"I don't like that you and Futaba have gotten so deep into something this dangerous. But from what I've heard in the last few weeks, what you're doing is--"

"It's _important_ ," Akira says quietly. Before his confrontation with Fake Igor in the Velvet Room, he might not have been able to say it with such conviction. But now he knows what the stakes really are and who their true enemy is. He keeps thinking about the way Lavenza and Elizabeth had described Fake Igor. A being of _control,_ and Akira can almost hear the clanging of cell doors when he thinks of the word. 

Control.

(He doesn't want to be controlled by anyone--he's a Trickster, and that means trouble and chaos and freedom. The imposter in the Velvet Room is as far from that as he can imagine)

"I've picked up on that," Sojiro says dryly. "Yeah. And that's the only reason that I'm going to allow this to continue. Well, that and the fact that I don't think it'd do any good if I tried to stop you. I'd rather have you doing this with my knowledge than behind my back. Got it?"

"Got it," Akira says. "And... thanks."

Sojiro grunts, and the conversation ends there. They both get out of the car, and head for the cafe. "You know," Sojiro says as they walk. "You still owe me a trip into that meta-place everyone's talking about. I'm tired of hearing that cat of yours meowing all the time and not knowing what he's talking about."

That's going to be _very_ weird. "Uh," Akira says. "Sure. We can go in whenever. Where is Morgana, by the way?"

"Back at the house with Futaba," Sojiro says, jerking his head back in that direction as he unlocks the door and lets both of them in. "He's been staying there while you were in your coma."

Poor Futaba. They've probably been arguing over what time she should go to bed ever since he went into the hospital. 

"I need to talk to him at some point," Akira says, as he sits at the counter. He still needs to tell Morgana what he's found out about where he came from. It's a conversation he's not looking forward to, but Morgana deserves to hear about it as soon as possible.

" _I_ need to talk to your school," Sojiro says. "You've missed two weeks already, and your friends say you're missing exams too so I'm sure getting you back in is going to be a hassle."

"Do you think you could maybe hold off talking to the school until after exams are over?" Akira asks hopefully.

"I could," Sojiro says. "But I won't."

Akira groans theatrically and lets his head thud down onto the counter.

"Don't be so dramatic," Sojiro says. But then he hesitates, and his tone is a little softer when he mutters something about making him lunch, "because clearly they haven't been feeding you anything at that hospital."

"Thanks," Akira says, and gets another grunt in response. A friendly grunt, though, not an irritated one, and Akira feels some of the tension that has been building during his stay alone at the hospital fade away. This isn't exactly home, but--it's as good as he's going to get in Tokyo, and it's pretty close.

Akira closes his eyes and waits, letting the by now familiar sounds of Sojiro moving around the kitchen wash over him. He's glad to be back, and he's even looking forward to getting back upstairs to his attic bedroom. He might even humor Morgana for a couple days about going to bed early. 

He's still thinking about how great it is to just be out of the hospital when something makes him turn and look toward the door. There's a pause, a weird in-between moment of waiting before it finally opens, and Lavenza walks in.

And it hits him that this is something that's just going to happen from now on. Lavenza is just going to be able to walk into his life. She's not a prisoner anymore. She's standing here, in Leblanc, looking a little nervous and only slightly out of place.

(For the first time, it feels like everything they've been through is a victory. Now that he's out of the hospital and she's standing in the doorway looking real and free and beautiful-- _looking real_ \--it feels like all the pain was worth it)

"Hey," Akira says. "I found a target in Mementos."

"While you were in the hospital?" she asks, a smile playing around the edges of her mouth.

"Sure," Akira says. "Why not?"

"Why not," she echoes, with a slight shake of her head. "You know, I don't know why I _am_ surprised."

He gestures to the seat next to him, inviting her to join him at the counter, and after a second she does. "Do you want to hear about it?" he asks. "I mean, I don't know if our next move is trying to push through Mementos, or going straight into another Palace, but I think it's worth checking out at least."

"Tell me about it, then," she says.

So he does. They sit at the counter, and they talk, and considering that Akira _could_ have spent today sweating through his first day of exams, it's not all that bad of an afternoon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am tentatively planning to take off next weekend from this fic, partly because P5 Strikers is coming out and I want to sit down and play a bunch, and partly because I have some other writing projects that I want to work on for a little while. Although who knows, I have poor self control and maybe I'll end up putting something up before then anyway.


	34. July 13 - July 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao so obviously the week off didn't happen! And I'm happy with that, I was able to both finish this chapter AND get about nine hours into Strikers (just got to the second location, to put it in as spoiler free a way as possible) so what a good weekend this has been!
> 
> On the downside... there's been some stuff going on in my personal life that's really shaken things up in the past couple weeks in a not very good way? I don't want to get too into it, but it's relevant to this fic because I honestly have no idea how or if it's going to impact my normal one update a week schedule. Maybe it's going to have to go to every other week updates, maybe I'm going to find a way to work around things and keep going one update a week, things are really up in the air right now and I just don't know. But if this disrupts things then please know that I'm very, very sorry! I love writing this fic, and I wouldn't be giving up weekly updates if there was anything other choice I could make.

_July 13_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Sojiro has known Akira for a few months at this point, or at least... he had _thought_ he's known him. The recent revelation that the weird kid who lives in his attic, brings cats home with no explanation, and talks Futaba out of her agoraphobic shell is _also_ the leader of the Phantom Thieves has recolored things slightly. The full story that had come out afterward, that had revealed him as someone that has been fighting other dimensional monsters since he was a kid, had changed things even more. Sojiro has been mentally (if subconsciously) bracing himself to bring a stranger home, and have to start over from scratch in figuring out who this kid really is.

The talk in the car on the way over had given him a little bit of reassurance that maybe his original opinion of Akira hasn't been that far off base. The kid had been nervous but _intensely_ set on what he's doing, and had clearly had no intention of letting Sojiro talking him out of what he thinks is right.

(Sojiro has wondered if maybe he _should_ try to talk these kids out of what they're all doing. If he hasn't been exposed to so many people over the past couple weeks that are convinced it's important--if he hadn't let himself get just a little bit caught up in it too--he might have made an effort now)

And so it seems like Akira is (probably) still Akira. He can do things that Sojiro had not known were possible a month ago, but he's still the same person. And that's good news, really. It's more reassuring than Sojiro had expected it to be.

He starts making curry when they get back, both because Akira has the hollowed out look of someone that's been lying in bed and not eating for two weeks, and because it's something comfortable and familiar to do right now while things don't quite feel normal yet. He's almost done with the dish when Akira sits up and turns around, looking over his shoulder at the doorway about thirty seconds before a girl appears there.

He recognizes her, but only because she sticks out so much that having seen her only once, Sojiro doesn't think he could have forgotten her. She'd come back with everyone the day they all showed up at Leblanc to announce that Akira was about to wake up from his coma. Futaba had explained her as someone vaguely related to everything going on, but not actually a part of the Phantom Thieves. And there's been so many other things going on in the past few days that Sojiro has not had the time or the inclination to follow up and find out what exactly is going on with her, but judging by Akira's reaction, maybe he should have.

Not because she's so obviously tied into whatever strangeness they're all involved in (although Sojiro is sure she is), but because she's obviously important to Akira. The way his face looks when he sees her is the entire awkwardly intense experience of being seventeen wrapped up in one uncharacteristically easy to read expression.

Well that's that, then. Whatever secrets Akira might be keeping, he's still the same slightly weird teenager Sojiro had thought he was. 

(with, pretty obviously, an enormous crush on the girl that has just walked in)

Sojiro keeps half an eye on them as he works, shamelessly eavesdropping on their conversation. It's easy to justify this to himself when he reminds himself that Akira has successfully kept the Phantom Thieves a secret ever since moving to Tokyo, and that if he really didn't want this conversation to be overheard, he'd find a way to keep it private.

So instead, Sojiro is treated to a conversation he does not actually understand about Shadow fighting, which gets progressively more detailed and complicated as it goes on. At least they seem to be enjoying themselves--whenever Sojiro turns in their direction, they're talking animatedly, apparently oblivious to everything else going on around them.

Eventually, the conversation is interrupted by Futaba charging in from outside, the cat squirming in her arms.

" _Nobody told me_ that you're back already," she says to Akira, voice rising slightly in accusation. "I had to find out from my bug."

"Oh," he says. "Well... I'm back now. You still have the bug up?"

"Obviously!"

He grins at her, then laughs at... something Morgana says. 

"So how are you feeling?" Futaba asks, as she hops up onto the empty seat next to Akira, opposite where his friend has made herself comfortable. 

"I'm fine," Akira assures her. "I've been fine since I woke up, no weird side effects or anything."

Sojiro raises his eyebrows, wondering if he should say something. He knows for a fact that the doctors have in fact _not_ given Akira completely clean bill of health, and that in fact they'd been worried even while releasing him. Of course, if he wants to tell his friends that he's fine, that's his choice. They might all have a secret in common, but his health is still something that he has the right to keep to himself if he wants to. 

"Sojiro!" Futaba says, turning to him. "Is he _actually_ fine?"

"I don't think the doctors would have let him out of the hospital if they thought he was going to keel over," Sojiro says dryly.

(Akira gives him a grateful sideways look for not calling him out on all his unusual test results)

(Sojiro nods in his direction)

"So what happens now?" Futaba asks. 

Everyone--cat included--looks at Akira for the answer to this question. Sojiro notices. And the others have told him that Akira is the leader of the Phantom Thieves. He'd been able to pick up on some of that dynamic weeks ago, even before he knew anything about what was really going on. He's seen it between Akira and Futaba most often, and occasionally between Akira and their other friends. But still. It's going to be something to think about.

Not only does he have two of the Phantom Thieves living under his roof, he has their leader staying in his attic. 

"We'll have to talk with everyone together," Akira says. 

"Here?" Futaba asks. 

"I do have a business to run here," Sojiro says. "If you're going to keep having your top secret meetings, you can at least keep them upstairs where you're not going to be overheard."

"What's upstairs?" Lavenza asks.

"My room," Akira says, turning very slightly red. "We've met up there before, it should be fine. There's plenty of space and everything."

"Great," Futaba says. "Should we ask if everyone's free after school?"

"It's exam week," Akira reminds her. "And it sounds like you guys have been running around like crazy in Mementos while I was in my coma, so... maybe better to wait until Saturday when everything's over."

Futaba groans in dramatic disappointment. "Seriously?" she says. "You want to wait until the weekend before we decide our next move?"

"It's only a few days," Akira says.

"That's like _forever_ ," Futaba complains.

And Sojiro thinks that it's--strange. Just more strangeness, getting used to how much the kids care about this. It's not just that they're doing this because they have to. They really, honestly _like_ it.

He turns away, shaking his head. It's been two weeks, and he'd thought he'd gotten used to all this. Turns out he's only just getting started.

-//-

_July 15_

_Evening_

-//-

The rest of the week is not a lot of fun for Akira. When Sojiro calls Shujin to talk to them about how they want to handle him coming back to class and making up his exams, their answer is that he'll need to come in all day Saturday _and Sunday_ so that he can take the tests and be ready for classes when they pick up again on Monday.

So he spends three miserable days with his textbooks and notes borrowed from Ann, trying to learn everything he'd missed while he was in his coma, and review everything they'd done before that, while he'd still been in class.

Turns out, almost dying is the kind of thing that drives a lot of academic lessons straight out of his mind. He is not going to do well, that's just a fact, because there's only so much good that last minute cramming can do.

On Friday night, with his brain feeling like it's about to burst, Akira abandons his textbooks in his room and goes downstairs to find Sojiro at work as usual behind the counter.

"Hey," Akira says. "So... when exactly did you want to go into Mementos?"

It's hard to read his guardian's expression when Sojiro turns around to look at him, but Akira tries anyway. There's definitely some surprise there, which Akira is guessing comes from the fact that they haven't talked about the issue at all in the past few days. There's also a little bit of trepidation, which is a fair and normal reaction to being invited to come visit another dimension, and just a _tiny_ bit of disappointment that Akira doesn't exactly understand.

"Aren't you supposed to be studying for your exams tomorrow?" Sojiro asks.

Oh. That's where the disappointment is coming from.

"I literally can't anymore," Akira says. "I've been studying for three days, my brain is about to explode."

Sojiro snorts, and relaxes very, very slightly. "So you're asking if we can go today," he says.

"Yeah," Akira says. "I'm guessing you probably don't want to go in a whole big group, but if we go with just Futaba and Morgana, we can leave as soon as you close up for the day."

Sojiro considers this, and then eventually nods. "Okay," he agrees. "After I close up for the day."

"Sounds good," Akira says. "I'll tell the other two."

And just like that, he has plans to take Sojiro into Mementos.

There's still some time before Leblanc's usual closing time, so Akira goes back upstairs, determinedly ignores his textbooks, and sits on his bed next to a snoozing Morgana, with his back against the wall and his phone out.

Someone had taken his phone into Mementos with them before he woke up from his coma, so the new metanav, the one with Lavenza's butterfly icon, is already installed there. Akira opens it up and looks down at the two entries there. Mementos, and Ishikawa's Palace back in Inaba.

There's no indication there of what their next step is going to be. No clue for what they're supposed to do, and for just a second this feels like too overwhelmingly large of a problem for them to be able to deal with. Every other Palace they've done so far has been something they more or less stumbled into. Futaba had found her own Palace. Ann and Ryuji had practically tripped over Kamoshida's. Madrame's had been necessary to keep Yusuke from being arrested, and Akechi and Haru together had led them to Okumura's.

Where to next?

The only lead Akira's been able to find so far has been for that couple that had been hassling Kawakami in the hospital, and they're in Mementos, not a Palace of their own, so that's not going to be any good.

Although, come to think of it, they should probably do something about those two, shouldn't they?

(It might even count as preparing for exams, right? It... could possibly put Kawakami in a better mood for grading, if she's not worried about whatever's going on with that)

(...okay, maybe that's kind of a stretch, but to be fair, he _is_ desperate)

> **Phantom Thieves**
> 
> I just talked to Sojiro about bringing him into Mementos tonight. Futaba, are you free?
> 
> **Futaba:** Obviously. Just us?
> 
> **Akira:** And Morgana. I figure there's no reason to bring everyone
> 
> **Futaba:** It'd probably just freak him out, yeah
> 
> **Ryuji:** I can't believe you guys are taking him in
> 
> **Ryuji:** It's just weird, isn't it? Bringing an adult in?
> 
> My whole life is weird
> 
> How are exams going, by the way?
> 
> **Ryuji:** They suck
> 
> Awesome, can't wait for tomorrow :(
> 
> **Ann:** I can't believe they're making you take them all in two days
> 
> I know!

He mutters to himself as he jabs at his phone with more force than is technically necessary (because honestly, the whole exams situation is actually terrible), and it's enough to wake Morgana up from his nap.

"Sorry," Akira says, pausing in his muttering and looking down at the cat. 

"What are you so upset about?" Morgana asks, uncurling and stretching himself out. 

"Exams," Akira says. "Hey, Sojiro's ready to come into Mementos today after he closes the cafe, are you cool with coming too?"

"Of course," Morgana says.

"Good," Akira says. "Since you're kind of the whole point we're bringing him."

Morgana puffs himself up a little.

Akira's phone continues to buzz.

> **Phantom Thieves**
> 
> **Haru:** Do you think you could ask for more time before exams?
> 
> I don't think so. Sojiro already talked to them about it
> 
> **Ann:** At least you'll still rank higher than Ryuji
> 
> True
> 
> **Ryuji:**...
> 
> **Ryuji:** I mean, yeah
> 
> Oh, also, I'm thinking about going to check out the Shadows of those two people that are bothering Kawakami
> 
> If everyone's okay with that, I mean
> 
> **Haru:** By yourself? The app says they're down in Chemdah
> 
> **Akira:** How far down is Chemdah? 
> 
> **Futaba:** It's the deepest one we have access to right now, the doors to the next level won't open yet
> 
> **Ann:** The Shadows are kind of tough
> 
> **Futaba:** Way less tough than the ones in Okumura's Palace. You could probably handle them
> 
> **Ryuji:** You don't wanna wait for us, though? 
> 
> **Ryuji:** Mom kind of has me on lockdown until exams are over, but I bet we could all go tomorrow?
> 
> I'm kind of hoping that if this helps Kawakami out, she might be in a better mood while she's grading exams
> 
> **Ann:**...
> 
> **Haru:**...
> 
> **Futaba:**...
> 
> **Ryuji:** Anything's worth a try, right? Good luck

Sojiro shouts up at him from downstairs that he's closing up, and to start getting ready to go.

> **Phantom Thieves**
> 
> We're about to head out. Futaba, you ready?
> 
> **Futaba:** Be there in a minute!

He shoves his phone in his bag and starts packing up his metaverse things. Someone's been through his supplies while he was in the hospital, he'd noticed when he first came home, but there's still more than enough for a quick Mementos run. He'll just have to stock up on supplies before they tackle whatever their next Palace ends up being.

"We're going to go check out the Shadows of those people that I saw bothering Kawakami when I was in the hospital," he tells Morgana. "Since we're going to Mementos anyway, I thought we could just bring Sojiro far enough in to let him hear you, and then bring him back out and go check out the Shadows."

"Just us?" Morgana asks.

"And Futaba, of course," Akira says. 

Morgana nods. "Sounds good to me," he says. "I don't actually like when people can't understand me, you know."

"Of course not," Akira says. "I wouldn't like it either."

"Not that it's not useful sometimes," Morgana says quickly. "I can get into places where the rest of you can't, and no one looks twice at me." He sighs, and droops a little. "It's just frustrating when it's someone that I would actually _want_ to talk to."

"Yeah," Akira says. He bites his lip, thinking--this really isn't the best time to tell Morgana where he came from. They're about to take Sojiro into the metaverse for the first (and probably last) time, and it's not fair to dump something this heavy on top of Morgana right before that. On the other hand, he's known for weeks now, and has already put off telling Morgana for too long. At this point, it's starting to edge into deliberate lying, and Akira doesn't like doing that to friends. "Listen," he says. "I..."

"If I was still human," Morgana says glumly. "Then this wouldn't even be a problem. People would just be able to understand me."

Okay. There's no way he's going to be able to avoid this any longer. 

"You're not human," he tells Morgana.

His friend looks up at him, clearly hurt. "I _know_ I look like a cat," he says. "But the jokes really aren't funny."

"I'm not joking," Akira says quickly. "I... sorry, I didn't exactly say that in the best way. But when I was down at the bottom of Mementos, I found out--" He has a hard time looking at Morgana's expression, suddenly. "I found out where you came from."

He lets that sit for a second, thinking that it must be kinder to do this slowly, to give Morgana time to think and to react.

He lets it sit too long, apparently, because Morgana eventually jumps up, bristling. "That's not possible," he says.

Akira blinks. "You're the one that keeps telling us your memories must be at the bottom of Mementos," he points out.

"No," Morgana says. "I know, but--" 

They look at each other, and Akira gradually realizes that Morgana isn't saying _that's not possible_ because he doesn't actually believe what he's hearing. He's saying _that's not possible_ because he doesn't want to hear it. 

"Morgana..."

"Everything you've told us about what happened in Mementos is pretty crazy," Morgana says. "Right? I'm not-- _I'm_ not anything crazy. I don't know what happened, but I'm just a normal human that got caught up in something, and then turned into a cat. That's all."

Akira senses that this is not the right time to point out that _anything_ that would end in a normal human being turned into a cat would be pretty crazy by default. Morgana's not arguing out of logic, he's arguing out of sheer desperation to not lose his sense of being human, and Akira knows exactly how that feels. He closes his (yellow) eyes for a long second, and then opens them again and nods. "Okay," he says. "But Morgana, listen, if you ever do want to talk about it..."

"Yeah," Morgana says. "Yeah, I know. I just--look, shouldn't we be getting downstairs? Futaba will be here soon, and we'd better get over to Mementos."

-//-

_July 15_

_Evening_

-//-

Sojiro follows the kids, and the cat, through the crowds at Shibuya Station until they finally get to an area that's basically deserted. Sojiro doesn't think he'd have been able to find an empty part of the station if his life depended on it, but the kids have obviously done this enough times for it to be second nature. They make a beeline to an out of the way corner with no one else around, and then Akira pulls out his phone.

He hesitates, looking up at Sojiro. "Sorry to have to ask," he says. "But do you have your phone on you?"

"Yeah," Sojiro says. "Of course, why?"

"Ooh, right," Futaba says. "We probably should have asked you to leave it at home, otherwise you're going to get the app too."

"He should be able to just turn it off," Akira says to Futaba. "That's what Haru did when I took her into her dad's Palace for the first time, and she didn't get the app until she went in later with her phone on."

Sojiro honestly doesn't have any desire to have an app on his phone that can take him into their metaverse. He pulls out his phone, turns it off, and turns it around so the kids can see the dark screen.

"Thanks," Akira says, looking more than a little awkward. "Sorry, I know that's sort of--"

"No," Sojiro says. "No, this is probably for the best."

The kid's expression is sheepish but grateful, and he swipes quickly through whatever he's looking at on his phone and then makes a definitive jab with his thumb at something on his screen. 

The whole world melts.

There's a feeling of disorientation that isn't quite physical. One moment he's standing on solid ground, and the next he's _still_ standing on solid ground, but something in the base of his brain recognizes it as being somehow the wrong kind of solid ground, even before he blinks and sees that the world really has changed. 

"Well," he says, managing a casual tone with what feels like a monumental effort of will. "I have to admit, I still half expected you were making all this up."

"Nope," Akira says. "I don't have a good enough imagination to come up with all this. I don't think _anyone_ has a good enough imagination to dream something like this up."

"Video game developers," Futaba says immediately.

"What?"

"I've played video games _way_ weirder than this," Futaba informs him. "I bet some of them could imagine something as weird as Mementos."

Akira shakes his head, and she sticks her tongue out at him.

Sojiro studies the space they're in. Studies the two of them. Futaba is in some kind of high tech looking suit, with a pair of chunky looking goggles that make her look (although Sojiro will never, ever tell her this) a little bit like a frog. Akira's outfit is a little less... eccentric. Dark, apart from the flash of red on his gloved hands, or the white of his mask. It's a little closer to what Sojiro imagines when he thinks of what a Phantom Thief is supposed to be.

He really doesn't want to know what Futaba thinks could be weirder than _this_.

"Anyway," Akira says, turning to look at Sojiro. "I guess we should probably make sure that you really can hear Mona while we're still here."

Sojiro doesn't answer right away. Now that Akira's looking in his direction, he can't help noticing the kid's eyes. He knows that they've changed, in the real world. He sees Akira every day, and it hadn't taken him that long to realize what it is about Akira's face that suddenly seems so different. But here, his eyes aren't just the yellow-ish hazel that Sojiro's getting used to seeing at home. They're golden, and light up his face with a kind of inhuman spark.

Eventually, he shakes his head and forces himself to snap out of it. He's already seen for himself that these two kids are the same people he'd known them to be before all this. The fact that they're _also_ Phantom Thieves doesn't make them different people. He shouldn't let the way that they look change the way he thinks about them either.

"Where is the cat, anyway?" he asks.

"Ooh," Futaba says, as Akira bites back a smile and points to somewhere behind Sojiro. "We probably should have mentioned that he _really_ doesn't like being called a cat."

"Why not?" Sojiro asks. "I mean, he is..."

He turns around, and what he'd been about to say dies mid-sentence. 

The kids look different down here. They're dressed as Phantom Thieves, and Akira has a significantly different air around him--more confident and even slightly inhuman--but the cat is something entirely different. Sojiro doesn't know if maybe no one has been quite clear about the fact that Morgana is some kind on anthropomorphic monster thing while he's in here, or if maybe he hasn't been paying enough attention. But either way, he feels distinctly unprepared for what he sees in front of him now.

"Okay," he says, not sure which of the three he should be addressing this to. He ends up sort of looking at the... not-cat, even as he points his comment more as the other two. "I guess you're right, there's no way he's a cat."

" _Thank_ you," Morgana says, crossing stubby arms and shooting a pointed look in the direction of Futaba and Akira. "Some people aren't nearly that observant."

"I don't know what you are," Sojiro says, trying not too feel too weird as he addresses Morgana directly for the first time. "But whatever it is, it's definitely not a cat."

"I'm human," Morgana informs him, despite all the evidence to the contrary. 

"Don't question it," Futaba advises him. "It's not worth arguing with him about it."

"Sure," Sojiro says uncertainly. 

"I lost most of my memory," Morgana says. "But that doesn't--" his face, for all that it looks alien and strange, is still easy to read. Sojiro watches his gaze shift sideways to Akira for a couple seconds. "It doesn't mean I'm not human."

Sojiro shrugs and shakes his head. "Sure," he says. "Okay, why not?" It's not like it really matters, what Morgana is. Whether he's a talking cat or a human that's turned into some kind of monster, he's still weird. "So what happens now?" he asks the three of them. 

"That's it," Akira says. "One of us can take you back out, and then we're going to head down to one of the lower levels to take care of a couple things."

"A couple things like what?" Sojiro asks.

"Some Shadows," Futaba says.

"So you're actually going to be fighting today?" Sojiro asks.

She nods.

(Akira has a vaguely suspicious expression on his face as he waits to see where Sojiro is going with this)

"Then why don't I stick around?" Sojiro asks, in a tone that makes it clear that this is not actually a question. "I want to get a look at what exactly you're doing in here."

"That's probably not a good idea," Akira says immediately.

"It's that dangerous?" he asks.

"It shouldn't be _too_ bad," Morgana says. "Most Shadows leave people alone if they're not Persona-users. But--"

"Then I want to get a look at this," Sojiro says. "If you all expect me to keep being okay with what you're doing, I want to see for myself what you're all facing down here."

Futaba and Morgana both look at Akira.

Akira looks at Sojiro. His expression is very serious. "If you really want to see us fighting," he says. "You have to promise that you'll stay back and out of the way. We know what we're doing, and you're honestly not going to be able to help."

Sojiro raises his eyebrows.

"Please?" Akira adds. "Give us a chance to at least show you that we can take care of ourselves."

"Alright," Sojiro says reluctantly, after several seconds of studying Akira's determined expression. It's fairly obvious that this is non-negotiable, and that if Sojiro wants to see what the kids are up to, he's going to have to agree with their terms. "I promise I'll just watch," he says. "I'll stay out of your way."

Akira nods, and seems to lighten a little. "Okay," he says. "Then we'll go fight some Shadows." 

He turns, a simple movement made more dramatic by his long coat, and takes a couple steps toward the escalators that lead down into the deep darkness. 

Then, abruptly, he stops and turns back around with a slightly panicked expression that ruins the drama completely. "And also you have to promise not to freak out when Mona turns into a bus, okay?"

"Turns into a _what_?"

There's a noise from behind him that sounds like a screech and a meow both at the same time, and he turns to see that Morgana has, in fact, turned into a bus.

(He almost turns around and leaves, there and then)

No one has mentioned the fact that the cat who thinks he is human can also turn into a bus. They have absolutely never mentioned that they get around in Mementos by driving that bus. It's enough, honestly, to make Sojiro start questioning his life choices almost immediately. And by the time they've gone down several levels to where Futaba tells them that the specific Shadows they're searching for are hiding, Sojiro is _definitely_ regretting this.

But he is, also, paying attention. The three of them--Morgana the human or cat or possibly bus included--clearly have this down to a science. Futaba's the one that does all the navigating, and the other two seem to take it as second nature to listen when she gives them directions. When they eventually reach their destination, and get into the fight (just Akira and Morgana, Sojiro's relieved to see. He doesn't particularly want Futaba right in the thick of things), they're smooth and confident.

They know what they're doing.

Sojiro _has no idea_ what they're doing. This is not a fight like any he's ever seen before, and even though he's been warned ahead of time about what's supposedly going on, he's somehow not ready for what he sees. It's one thing to hear about the Persona they use to fight these Shadows off, but it's something else completely to see them appear from nowhere and attack. Neither Akira nor Morgana seem to think there's anything strange about it at all, though.

(Because they don't. Because this is something they do all the time, because this is _normal_ to them)

Not even Futaba looks at all bothered, and Sojiro's sure that even if all of the Phantom Thieves had been down here and fighting together, not a single one of them would have been at all bothered about the scene playing out in front of them.

He watches the fight all the way through to the end, knowing that this will likely be the only chance he ever has to see a fight between the Phantom Thieves and a Shadow. And as strange as it is, this is what he'd come down here for. If he didn't want to know what they're really doing, he could have stayed at the surface and left after talking to Morgana.

He'd come with them because he wants to see exactly this. 

When it's over, all three of the Phantom Thieves converge around the two defeated Shadows. They don't quite look like Shadows anymore--they look like something _between_ human and Shadow, with darkness swirling around their feet and eyes that look discomfortingly like Akira's. There's a conversation between the Thieves and the Shadows, and Sojiro feels... a little bit too much like an intruder to get close enough to hear the words. That, and he's not entirely sure that the fighting isn't going to start back up again. From where he's standing, he can't quite tell what the conversation is about. Akira seems to start out by accusing the Shadows of something, with the other two Thieves backing him up.

But when the two Shadows eventually give in--even from where he's standing, Sojiro can see the change in posture--they seem to melt, or evaporate, or _something_ , and suddenly there's nothing left of them but a kind of spark, which Akira reaches out to grab.

"And that's it?" Sojiro asks, into the absolute silence that follows.

"That's it," Akira says. "Normally we'd stick around and try and do a bunch of these at once, but--" He looks at Sojiro, just for a second, and Sojiro can tell that he'd just really rather not do all this with an adult around. "But we got a late start today," he says. "So we'll just head back up."

Sojiro allows this, since he doesn't feel a particularly urgent need to see any more Shadow fights. 

As they head back up to the surface--and in an effort to keep himself from thinking too hard about how Morgana has once again turned into a bus--he asks, "So what exactly happened back there?"

"It's a change of heart," Futaba says. "Like the Palaces, but on a smaller scale."

"So whoever that was," Sojiro says. "That means they're going to give a press conference?"

"No way," Morgana says. "They're not a big enough deal for that."

"But hopefully they'll at least stop blackmailing my homeroom teacher," Akira says. "Maybe even apologize."

Sojiro raises his eyebrows. "That's what that was about?" he asks.

Akira nods. And he's driving (is that the right word? Their bus is a _cat_ ) so he can't really turn away from what he's doing. It's hard to read his expression, from this angle. "She was in the hospital the same time I was," he explains to Sojiro. And while I was there I happened to overhear this couple talking to her about--well, I didn't catch all the details. But she's working two jobs to pay their blackmail, and--"

"And I did some digging after Akira got their names," Futaba says. "They took in one of their relatives after his parents died, and forced him to work a bunch of jobs to pay for their lifestyle. I found some old social media posts from him about all the part time work he did after school, and how his teacher was helping him keep up his grades with tutoring. And, uh..." She looks hesitant. "Then I found some pretty awful messages his guardians sent Akira's teacher after he died. Basically blaming her for the whole thing." She shuffles her feet a little. "They were--really nasty."

"So you changed their hearts," Sojiro says.

"Yeah," Morgana says. "It's the right thing to do. If we can help, we should."

It's a pretty final statement to end the conversation on, and indeed there's not much more talk all the way back up to the surface. Futaba wonders if they're going to run into someone called Jose, and Akira answers that if Jose wants to see them, he'll show up. But that's pretty much it. And before long, they're back in the real world, surrounded by people going about their lives, none of them having any idea that other world even exists.

"We should probably be getting home," Morgana says, and Sojiro can't help but startle a little at the fact that he actually _can_ understand him. He knows that had been the whole point of going into Mementos, but somehow it's... still hard to wrap his mind around it. Around the fact that the black cat poking his head out of Akira's school bag is the same as the bulbous headed creature that had turned into a bus inside Mementos. "You have exams tomorrow, Akira."

Akira groans. "I guess," he says. "It's getting pretty late."

"Hey," Futaba says. "Mona, are you going with him tomorrow or staying home with us?"

"Going with," Morgana says at once.

"Nope," Akira says. "Staying home--I'm going to be the only one making up exams, someone's _definitely_ going to notice if I try to sneak you in."

This time it's Morgana's turn to sulk. And the conversation continues all the way back to Yongen-Jaya, as normal as any conversation that includes a talking cat can be. Sojiro just listens, and shakes his head at what he hears. Normal kids, Phantom Thieves--he doesn't know what category they fit into anymore. 

(By the time they go their separate ways at the Yongen-Jaya station, Akira and Morgana heading back to the cafe to sleep, and Sojiro taking Futaba home, he's convinced that this is because there _is_ no category for them)

(They belong in a category all their own)

-//-

_July 17_

_Morning_

-//-

The first day of Akira's marathon makeup exams goes--well, it doesn't go quite as badly as it could have. Some of the desperate cram work he's done over the past week has apparently stuck, because he doesn't feel like he's completely bombed them. But it's still miserable, and when Akira drags himself back into school _on a Sunday_ to finish the rest of them, he doesn't expect that things are going to be any better on day two.

It's kind of creepy in Shujin on a Sunday, with almost no one else around. Kawakami, as his homeroom teacher, has gotten stuck with the job of sticking around to supervise him and make sure he's not cheating. They'd had an awkward Saturday holed up in the library while Akira struggled through the first half of his exams.

When Akira reaches the library today, he finds Kawakami hunched over one of the desks, staring at what looks like a letter spread out on the desk in front of her. She looks like she might have been crying.

"Are you okay?" Akira asks, hovering several feet away in case she turns out to be an angry crier.

At first, he thinks that Kawakami hasn't heard him, but eventually she looks up, and stares at him blankly for several long seconds. Eventually, she says, "When we talked in the hospital... you didn't tell anybody what I said, did you?"

"No," Akira lies immediately. "Why?"

"Because I don't see why they would have..." She trails off, and stares down at the paper again. "No one else knew anything about what they were doing."

This has to have something to do with fighting their Shadows in Mementos. Akira hadn't expected to actually get to see the results of what they'd all done together, because he doesn't know Kawakami that well, and he figures that she's not likely to open up to him.

Turns out he was wrong. Or at least wrong enough to get him a _little_ bit of insight into what had happened in the real world, to see the result that looks like something that has shaken up her life completely. 

"They actually apologized," Kawakami murmurs, and since it's not clear whether she's talking to him or to herself, Akira stays quiet and lets her keep talking for as long as she's willing to. "They actually wrote me an apology letter for--" 

For blackmail, Akira thinks. For blaming her for the death of the relative they were supposed to have been taking care of.

"Are you upset?" he asks tentatively, trying not to watch her emotional, tear stained face as he asks the question. "That, um... that they sent you the apology." He doesn't know why she would be, but she _looks_ like she is, and after all they hadn't really had that much information about what's going on here.

(Nothing except the fact that Kawakami had been trying to help the same kid that those two had been forcing to work until he literally died)

(Nothing except that somehow, _they_ have ended up blackmailing _her_ )

"No," Kawakami says. "Of course not. Not at all." And it really seems like she's a little bit more confident as she says that, like maybe she even holds her head up a little higher.

They'd picked the right target.

"I'm happy to hear they apologized, anyway," Akira says offhandedly, trying to sound like what he knows she thinks he is--just a kid in her class, one of a couple dozen, one that happens to have overheard an embarrassing conversation she'd had while they were both in the hospital. "They seemed kind of like assholes."

Kawakami gives a half snorted laugh, something that sounds more genuinely happy than anything Akira's heard from her in all the time he's been at this school. And she actually _smiles_ a little when she tells him to sit down already and get ready for the first exam of the morning.

It turns out that this confirmation that the change of heart had actually stuck gives Akira a pretty good burst of motivation. The second day of exams isn't nearly as bad as the first one had been, and Akira even catches Kawakami humming under her breath once or twice as she sits at another table, nominally grading papers but mostly staring out the window instead.

Time passes quickly. Akira doesn't feel quite as in over his head on today's exams, and he actually finishes the last one with time to spare. 

"I'm done," he tells Kawakami, when he's done a quick skim over his answers and decided he's as satisfied with them as he's going to get. "Do I need to stick around for the whole time, or can I leave early?"

"You can leave if you're done," she tells him, and Akira stands up to hand over the exam paper. "I don't want to stay here any later than I have to on a Sunday."

Akira nods, shoulders his bag, and heads for the library door. He's not quite there when Kawakami calls his name, and he looks back.

"It's good to see you feeling better," she tells him. "You looked like shit when you were in the hospital."

Akira grins. "Yeah," he says. "You too." Then he winces at how that probably sounds, and adds, "I'm glad you're also feeling better, I mean. Not that you also looked like shit."

"Get out of here, Kurusu," Kawakami says, waving a vague hand toward the door. "I have other places to be."

Akira leaves before she either changes his mind or he sticks his foot further in his mouth, and pulls out his phone as soon as he's out on the street.

> **Phantom Thieves**
> 
> Guess who's done with exams!
> 
> **Futaba:** I hope it's you, or else I think you're about to get your phone confiscated
> 
> Yes it's me. And I figured we could all meet up and do some actual planning for our next move?
> 
> **Ryuji:** Yeah! It's been way too long since we were in a Palace
> 
> **Yusuke:** Where should we meet?
> 
> **Futaba:** I just asked Sojiro if we can all meet up here, he rolled his eyes but said yes as long as we stay upstairs and not be too loud
> 
> **Ann:** Sounds like a plan then :)
> 
> **Haru:** Akira, do you want me to invite Lavenza?

His fingers pause over the keyboard on his phone, considering his answer before he types it. It's still so strange (good, but strange) to be able to make plans like this that involve Lavenza. On the other hand, he really hasn't been able to figure out what her role in everything is supposed to be. If things had been normal, he has a feeling she would have been perfectly happy to stay in the Velvet Room. Since the Velvet Room is closed off, he doesn't know what she'll decide to do instead.

The first step in finding out is probably to ask, though, right?

> **Phantom Thieves**
> 
> Yeah, see if she wants to come :)
> 
> **Haru:** She says she'd be happy to

He's thinking about whether he should reply when he suddenly hears someone calling his name.

"Oh hey," he says, when he looks up and sees who it is. "Makoto, what are you doing here?"

"Student council had a meeting earlier," she explains. "We're a little behind on a few projects because of exams. What are _you_ doing here?"

"Finishing my exams," Akira says. "I missed most of them while I was sick, so I had to make them up over the weekend."

"I guess that means you're feeling better, then?" Makoto asks.

"Pretty much," Akira says. Feeling better as long as no one happens to ask what species he is, anyway.

"I'm glad to hear it," Makoto says. "I was--well, I heard what happened from Haru."

"I'm sorry for worrying you," Akira says.

She shrugs. "It's not like you chose to be in a coma."

No, but if he hadn't lost his temper with Fake Igor, he wouldn't have ended up in one.

"Are you coming back to school tomorrow?" Makoto asks. "I assume you must be well enough, since you were able to sit for exams."

"Yeah," Akira says. "I'll be here in the morning."

"I'll see you at lunch, then," Makoto says, and starts to head down the street, toward the train station.

Akira hesitates, watching her go. The thing is, he's been _meaning_ to talk to Makoto for a while, but since he hasn't been at school, he hasn't had a chance to have the conversation he doesn't want to do over text. He'd gotten his memories of the labyrinth back while he was in the Sea of Souls, so he knows that not only does Makoto have a Persona, but she's also willing to work with the Phantom Thieves under certain circumstances.

The only problem is that _she_ doesn't remember.

And that doesn't seem fair, does it? Haru had gotten Milady back, shouldn't Makoto know about Johanna?

(On the other hand, what if she isn't willing to work with them, without the immediate threat of the labyrinth?)

(No. No, she'd worn a mask and that means she has a rebel's heart)

"Hey," Akira says. "Are you heading back through Shibuya?"

"I am," Makoto says. "Are we going the same way?"

"Yeah," Akira says. "And listen, as long as you're headed that we anyway... do you mind if we take a little detour? There's something I want to show you."

Makoto nods, and so the two of them head down the street together. At the station, while Makoto is digging through her bag for her train pass, Akira pulls out his phone and sends out a few quick texts.

> **Phantom Thieves**
> 
> So... I'm going to be a little bit late
> 
> **Yusuke:** How did you find trouble in the last two minutes?
> 
> You know how Haru has a Persona and doesn't remember how she got it?
> 
> **Haru:** Yes! Did you figure something out about that?
> 
> Yeah, and you're not the only one, Haru. I'll explain when we get there
> 
> **Futaba:** "We"?
> 
> Hopefully ;)

"Are you coming, Akira?" Makoto asks.

"Yep," he says, slipping his phone back into his pocket. "Coming."

-//-

_July 17_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Makoto is curious what Akira wants to show her in Shibuya Station, so she agrees readily enough to following him as he weaves a path through hallways she's never had a reason to go down. It's not until he stops in a completely deserted area that alarm bells start to go off in the back of Makoto's brain.

(But that's stupid. This isn't some stranger, it's _Akira_. A friend of hers)

"So what is it that you wanted to show me?" she asks.

"We're almost there," he says, his face buried in his phone. "Hang on a second."

"Almost where?"

He looks up, finger hovering over something on the phone screen, and Makoto is struck by the way he looks. She's never particularly noticed his eyes before, but she's sure that if they'd been this color before, she would have noticed. In this light, they look almost golden. "It's called Mementos," he says.

And the whole world changes.

Makoto stands, her mouth open and her heart beating suddenly too fast, as the plain walls of Shibuya Station transform into something unfamiliar and almost monstrous. She turns, still trying to take it all in, and realizes that she can feel something cold and metallic over her eyes.

(Her first reaction to this is relief and excitement, and she doesn't know why)

(She should be afraid, and she is _not_ )

"What's going on?" Makoto asks. "Where are we?"

"It's like I said," Akira tells her. "This is Mementos. It's a part of an alternate dimension called the metaverse." 

"Mementos," Makoto murmurs. She turns, and is not as surprised as she should be to see that his school clothes have vanished, replaced by a long black coat. There's a white mask on his face, which doesn't manage to hide the fact that his eyes--which had seemed merely unusual back in Shibuya--have actually started to glow once they got here. And that _does_ surprise her, because she hasn't seen that before--

...

She hasn't seen _any_ of this before.

(Has she?)

"Haru tells me that the two of you already guessed that I'm a part of the Phantom Thieves," Akira says, as Makoto continues to try and work through her shock. His voice is completely matter of fact, even as he watches her closely to see what her reaction will be. "Although obviously you didn't guess that we change hearts by fighting Shadow versions of our targets in the metaverse, and physically stealing whatever it is that's caused their view of the world to distort."

"No," Makoto says, her voice sounding high and distant in her own ears. "No, we--didn't guess that."

"Right," Akira says. "Because it sounds crazy, which is why I wanted to explain all this to you while we were in here. At least it's a little bit of proof."

Makoto hesitates a few seconds, giving her brain a chance to catch up. Then she asks, "Why did you want to explain at all?" she says. "There's no way we ever would have figured it out. We couldn't have proved you were doing anything like this, so why...?"

Akira sighs. "Well," he says. "There's a few reasons. First of all, Haru knows all this already."

"She _what_?"

"It's--actually kind of a long story," Akira says. "And I'll have to explain a whole lot of other parts of this before I can explain what happened with Haru, so we'll circle back around to that. Second, you're a friend. We were going to tell you anyway, me and Haru, because it just stopped feeling like the right thing to do to keep lying to you."

"I appreciate that," Makoto says, raising her eyebrows slightly. A little bit of the initial shock has started to fade, at least enough that she can think about what she's hearing. "Was there a third thing?"

"Yeah," Akira says. "And it's kind of the big one."

Makoto waits. Akira seems to be mentally composing his answer be fore saying anything out loud, but finally he lifts his gaze up toward the ceiling, like he's wary of seeing her reaction to this part, and says, "That day there was all that weird fog at school, it pulled the Phantom Thieves, you, and Haru into another dimension, along with another group from 2011, which--fun fact--also included a younger me from back then. And you ended up helping us fight our way back out, but then when we left the memories all got taken away from us, which is why you don't remember any of this."

Makoto stares at him.

Akira looks vaguely embarrassed at having to give this extremely weird explanation. 

"How are you telling me all this if _everyone_ forgot?" she asks.

"Oh," Akira says, looking back at her at last. "Well, when I was in my coma, my soul ended up in this place called the Sea of Souls, which is _also_ known as the Collective Unconscious, and is apparently the kind of place where memories go when you lose them. And while I was there, I got mine back."

Makoto shakes her head, dumbfounded. "But..."

"Yeah," Akira says. "I know. But I couldn't let you..." There's something complicated on his face. "I couldn't let you keep going and not even know that you have a Persona. Whatever happens next."

"A Persona," Makoto repeats.

(Something in the back of her mind... stirs)

"You haven't mentioned that word before," she tells Akira.

"Oh right," Akira says. "I should probably show you." He takes a couple steps back, and grabs for his mask.

"Wha--"

" _Persona_!"

And something bursts forth from him. Something that looks only half real, something _powerful_ , something... familiar?

(She remembers, suddenly, _something_. A fragment of the memories Akira claims have been taken away from her. She remembers standing in front of something that looks like a giant playing card, with Haru too still on the ground beside her. On her other side is a boy that looks too much like Akira--right down to the coat and mask--to avoid the impossible conclusion that he _is_ Akira)

(She remembers how he'd fought with the same Persona she sees in front of her now)

(She remembers... she remembers that she'd fought with one of her own)

"That's... Arsene," she says uncertainly. "Right?"

"Right," Akira says, as the figure behind him vanishes. "I have a bunch more, but they're just sort of recruited, and--" He catches sight of her expression. "I won't go into that now. Arsene's my Persona, basically."

"Oh," Makoto says. "Right."

He smiles, and somehow he manages to make it seem sympathetic. Even in this place, even in his strange costume and mask. "Yours is Johanna."

The word stirs something deep inside Makoto, and she half turns, taking several steps away, listening hard for...

For what?

For the voice she hears, sudden and clear, the voice of her Persona calling out to her.

_You made your choice when you forged your contract with me. It was a decision of the heart and not the head, so will you really relinquish it so easily just because your memories are gone?_

No. She has no idea what she's agreeing to, but there is something inside her that recognizes this, and knows that voice, and is desperate not to lose it again. She reaches upward to her mask, and pulls. _"Johanna!"_ she calls. 

And her Persona responds, bold and powerful and strange and familiar, all at once. She has absolutely no idea what this means for her, what's going to happen next, or what she's getting herself into. But she knows that it's _right_.

Makoto stands for several long moments, breathing heavily, and then looks at Akira.

He's beaming like a madman. "So," he says. "I'm actually heading back to meet with the rest of the Thieves. If you want, you can come with. I can catch you up on the way."

Makoto considers this. She really does think about it. But then, almost reluctantly, she shakes her head. "Something tells me that after the way I've been trying to track you all down," she says. "I might not be exactly welcomed by whoever else you're meeting up with."

"I don't think it'll be that bad," Akira says confidently. "They're good people."

"Which I suppose makes me the bad one," Makoto says. "For chasing you all."

Akira's smile vanishes, and he shakes his head. "Not bad," he says. "Just temporarily on opposite sides. We're Thieves, it's not like it doesn't make sense that people are going to want to find out who we are. We're just lucky that the first person to try turned out to be someone we could trust."

Makoto flushes. "If you think you could tell them," she says. "If you could tell them what happened, and see if... they'd be okay with it..."

"Okay," Akira says. "Sure. I'll let them know you're coming."

"And maybe catch me up a little bit," Makoto says. "I--have a lot of questions."

"Sure," Akira says easily. "No problem, we can talk at lunch tomorrow."

"Just like that?" Makoto asks.

Akira nods. And Makoto wonders what exactly had happened, in this fog that no one but Akira remembers, to convince him that she's definitely on their side.

Maybe she'll ask him, when the time comes for him to answer the rest of her questions.

-//-

_July 17_

_Evening_

-//-

"You're late," Sojiro informs Akira when he finally makes it back to Leblanc. "Your friends are all upstairs waiting for you."

"Thanks," Akira says. "Something came up."

"Hmm," Sojiro says, and there are customers in the cafe so he doesn't push any further. There are questions in his eyes, though, and Akira half shrugs in answer.

"It wasn't anything bad," he says. "Don't worry."

"I haven't done anything else for weeks now," Sojiro grumbles. "Get upstairs before your friends get any more impatient."

Akira runs up the stairs, where he finds the rest of the Phantom Thieves spread out around the room and having a lively argument about some movie that's coming out over summer break.

"It's just another dumb zombie movie," Ann's saying when Akira comes up the stairs. "You seriously want to spend two hours of your summer vacation watching actors stumbling around and pretending to eat brains?"

"Obviously!" Ryuji says. "You--" And then he catches sight of Akira, and cuts off. "Hey!" he says. "Took you long enough."

Futaba throws a magazine at Akira, who ducks. "Why'd you leave us waiting?" she complains. 

"I had to talk to Makoto," Akira says. "About the fact that she got a Persona the same time Haru did, and neither of them remembers it."

"She _what_?" Morgana asks.

"Long story," Akira says. He's been half expecting an argument about this, but in the moment, he just... he hadn't been able to justify the idea of keeping this a secret from Makoto even one more day. "And I think she's still a little bit in shock and trying to process it, so we can catch up on that later."

"You just up and told her she has a Persona?" Ryuji asks. "Dude, she's been trying to hunt us down for ages."

"She has a Persona," Akira repeats. "Can you imagine..." he hesitates. "Can you imagine what it would be like to _not remember_ having a Persona?"

He's had his for five years now. He's had Arsene in his mind and his heart since he was eleven years old. And he has no idea what his life would have been like--who he would have _been_ \--without that.

"It would not be a fate I would want for anyone," Yusuke muses, after several thoughtful moments of silence among the whole group. "Not even someone like Akechi, I don't think."

"I dunno," Ryuji mutters. "Things would be a lot easier if that guy had never showed up in the metaverse."

"His choices have made things difficult for you all," Lavenza muses. "But not the fact that he has his Persona." She taps a thoughtful finger against her chin. "Although perhaps things would have been easier had he only gotten the single Persona. He seems to be much more aggressive when he fights with Loki than with Robin Hood."

This comment is enough to immediately drive the problem of Makoto having a Persona out of everyone's heads. There's another silence, this one even longer than the first one.

Finally, Akira asks, "He has _two_?"

Lavenza looks up, and seems to realize for the first time that everyone is staring at her in surprise. "Yes," she says. "You really didn't know?"

"We only ever saw him fight with one Persona," Ann says. "With Robin Hood."

"No," Lavenza says. "You have seen both of them."

"Uh," Ryuji says. "I think we'd have noticed if he just up and started using a different Persona."

Ann gasps suddenly and reaches across the table to grab Ryuji's forearm in a grip so tight that he winces in pain.

"Ann," he says. "What the f--"

"Loki," she says. "His other Persona is _Loki_."

"Yeah," Ryuji says, trying to pry her fingers off his arm. "I heard what she said, can you maybe let go of me now?"

"Does that mean something to you?" Akira asks Ann.

" _Yes_ ," she says. "Loki was the Persona the Black Mask used to attack Ryuji in Kamoshida's Palace, the day he awoke Captain Kidd."

"But that would mean--Akechi is the Black Mask?" Morgana demands. " _Seriously_?"

"I..." Lavenza looks briefly surprised, and then immediately apologetic. "I honestly thought that everyone knew."

"We definitely didn't," Ryuji says. 

"Hang on," Akira says. "How would that even work? I hate to point out the obvious, but his mask is red. It's why we started calling him Flamingo."

"He has two masks," Lavenza explains. "I've seen both of them from outside the Velvet Room."

Akira slumps back in his chair, rubbing one hand over his face. It's not Lavenza's fault that they'd all been too stupid to put the pieces together and figure out that confirmed suspicious Persona-user Akechi might be the same person as mysterious and murderous Persona-user the Black Mask. But to be fair, Akira's never heard of anyone else that can change their metaverse costume. And he doesn't know anyone other than himself and Yu who can call more than one Persona.

But if they'd figured all this out earlier... maybe it would have helped Haru's dad. Maybe they would have been even more suspicious of Akechi, and maybe they wouldn't have even considered working with him. Or pretending to work with him, however things had worked out.

"He really has two Persona?" Haru asks tentatively. "Does that mean he can recruit them too? Like Akira can?"

"Because that's _all_ we need," Akira says from behind his hand.

"It's possible," Lavenza says. "I'm really not sure. But he is... broken in unusual ways. His heart is split, and so..." She holds out her two hands, as if weighing options on a scale. "On the one side, Loki. On the other, Robin Hood."

Akira lets all this sink in for several seconds. They should have been so much more careful with Akechi. If they'd known more, they would have. But they hadn't known anything, and so they hadn't been careful, and so...

He sighs and leans forward again, taking his hand away from his face. "Well I guess I know why he wanted to call himself Crow," he says at last. "He _did_ have a black mask."

"We missed that," Futaba moans. "I can't believe we missed that."

"But we know now," Akira says. "And we know not to trust him." He looks over at Haru. "I'm... sorry," he says. "If anyone was hurt by the fact that we couldn't put the pieces together in time, it was your dad."

Haru shakes her head. "We _did_ know that Akechi was dangerous," she says. "Whether he was the Black Mask or not, it doesn't make the decision to trust him with access to my father's Palace any better or worse than we already knew it was. We tried to get through it as quickly as we could. We _all_ did everything possible to save my father, and ensure he had a change of heart. I don't see what we could have done differently if we'd known he was the Black Mask."

This, at least, is true. They'd already been running through the Palace as quickly as possible. The only thing they might have done differently if they'd known is maybe not gone with him into the Palace he suggested in the first place, and that just hadn't been an option after finding out what Haru was going through.

"Well," he says. "We know to be careful now. We know what kind of a person Akechi is, and we know that we can't trust him."

"What are we going to do about him?" Ann asks. "We can't let him keep running around in the metaverse now that we know who he is."

"I think I want to try talking to him," Akira says. "I want to confront him with all this and see what he says."

"You think he'll tell the truth?" Futaba asks doubtfully.

"I'd be shocked if he did," Akira says. "But I think the type of lie he tells me will be interesting." He shrugs. "And he's mostly been talking to me, anyway. So... I'll take care of Akechi, and let all of you know what happens?"

"Just let us know if you need backup," Morgana says. "He's dangerous, remember."

"Yeah," Akira says. "No kidding." Then he shakes his head, and deliberately moves away from the topic of Akechi. "But there's nothing else we can do about him right this second, and we still need to decide who our next target should be."

"Oh yeah," Ryuji says, perking up immediately. "Anyone have any ideas?"

Akira doesn't--he's been so busy studying for exams that he hasn't even had time to think about new Palaces. He's a little surprised, though, when Futaba leans forward immediately with her phone outstretched. "Yeah," she says. "How about this one?"

They all turn to look, clearly curious, but Akira shakes his head immediately when he sees the entry there.

Ryoko Ishikawa. Fishbowl. Yasoinaba's Elementary School.

"We can't do that," he says. "It's back home, not in Tokyo."

"I know," Futaba says. "But summer break is coming up, and that should be more than enough time to get through it, right?"

"I mean--" Akira fidgets a little, because _obviously_ he'd love to be back in Inaba taking care of Ishikawa's Palace, but that's just not going to be possible. "I mean, first of all, it's not going to help us get any deeper in Mementos, is it? And there's my probation, I'm _specifically_ not supposed to be there."

"I think it would be a good idea, though," Futaba says in a rush. "Everything you said about that scary guy that took over the Velvet Room makes it sound like we're going to want to be careful next time we go through a Palace. So I thought it might be good to have a test one somewhere outside Tokyo and away from Mementos, and guess which one we already know about?"

"She has a point," Lavenza says softly. "It's possible that the imposter could have laid traps within any Palaces, possibly even changed the rules."

"Would he have, though?" Akira asks. "If he thinks we're dead..."

"We don't _know_ what he did," Lavenza says. "But I believe that he is more likely to be closely watching the Palaces close to Tokyo, and Mementos. Exploring a Palace in Inaba would give us a chance to see if anything has changed, and to adapt to those changes if necessary, without him observing."

"Okay," Akira says. "But--"

"If you're about to mention the probation," Yusuke says. "I don't really think that anyone in Inaba is going to report you, do you? Apart from possibly Ishikawa herself, but it shouldn't be difficult to avoid her in the real world. But you have enough friends and allies there to keep you hidden while we visit."

"But--"

"I already talked to Sojiro about it," Futaba says, with the air of someone delivering a finishing blow. "And honestly I think he's happy about the idea of not having to hear about our weirdness for a month? Plus he knows Dojima now, and he knows he's responsible, so." She finishes this sentence with a shrug.

"I mean..." He's running out of arguments against the idea, and honestly? He's kind of losing enthusiasm for arguing against it in the first place. "Does anyone else have any objections?"

"I've always liked Inaba," Lavenza says immediately.

"As have I," Yusuke agrees. "I would like to see it again."

"So we'd get to see your hometown?" Ryuji asks. "That sounds cool, man."

"Why not?" Haru asks. "And this is the underwater Palace, isn't it? I'd like to see what that looks like for myself."

"Right," Ann agrees. "And it probably _doesn't_ hurt to be careful," Like Futaba said. We... we don't want any more surprises like the one with Akechi, do we?"

"No," Morgana agrees. "This is a good Palace to do next. We'll be able to make sure that nothing's changed with the way Palaces work, without drawing any direct attention to ourselves, and then once we've gathered that information we can come back here and dive back into the plan for opening Mementos." He sits, wrapping his tail around his paws. "Plus, there's absolutely no chance of running into Akechi all the way out there, and it'd be better to learn more about him before we see him in the metaverse again."

"Okay," Akira says. "Then--I guess we're doing this."

"I'll have to talk to Dojima later today," he says. And make sure he's okay with harboring him for a month during his probation.

(He has a feeling it'll be fine)

"Let us know what he says," Ryuji says.

"I will," Akira says. "Summer break starts on the 27th--assuming everything works out okay, are you guys all okay with heading down then?"

Everyone is. And, more importantly, when Akira calls Dojima later that night, after it's just him and Morgana left in the attic room, it takes almost no convincing whatsoever to get Dojima to agree. 

"I kind of wondered when I was going to get this question from you," Dojima says. "Nanako's been dropping hints ever since we got back from Tokyo that you'd be the best person to figure out how to get through that teacher's Palace."

"I don't know about that," Akira admits. "But I'd really like a chance to try." He's been pacing across the room while they talk, but he drops onto his mattress bed now with a grin. "And I'd like to come home, too. I don't really think it's _that_ much of a risk?" Hopefully not, anyway. Hopefully his friends are right about that. "Sojiro's on board already, so he's not going to sell me out over breaking my probation, and I know how to keep a low profile."

"I don't think there are that many people here that would actually want to turn you in, anyway," Dojima says. "It seems like every time I've talked to anyone in town over the past few months, the conversation eventually gets around to how unfair your probation is, and how wrong it was of Ishikawa to testify against you in the first place."

"I'm sure that's a big reason her Palace has gotten so complicated," Akira says. "If people are saying that to you, I bet they're saying it to her, too."

"I have absolutely no doubt," Dojima says. "But what it comes down to is that as long as you think you can be careful, and manage whatever kind of trouble you inevitably get into, I think you can--I think you _should_ come home."

"Yeah," Akira says with a smile. "I think I should come home too."

"I'm guessing your Phantom Thieves would all be coming too," Dojima says. "To help out with this Palace."

"Yes," Akira admits.

"You'll have to work out somewhere for them to stay," Dojima warns. "There's no way I'm having that many teenagers in the house for a month."

"I'm sure we can figure something out," Akira says. He doesn't know what, yet, but this seems like an easy to solve issue, compared to everything else. "Do you think Futaba could stay with us, though? She's--" He hesitates, not sure if Dojima's going to take this as an insult or not. "I know we haven't known each other too long, but she's a lot like Nanako?"

"I don't know about that," Dojima says. "I've met her, and she certainly seems like a nice kid, but not much like Nanako."

"Not in personality," Akira says. "But I mean... I kind of feel responsible for her. Like a sister, a little bit?"

He winces at how this sounds. He doesn't want to seem like he's replacing everyone in Inaba. But Futaba _has_ wormed herself into the same kind of place in his heart as Nanako, and there's no point pretending otherwise. Maybe it was inevitable, with the two of them sharing first a guardian and then a secret with the Phantom Thieves.

But Dojima doesn't seem insulted. "You're a good kid yourself, Akira," he says. "Most people would have been too busy resenting a situation like yours to even think about making friends like the ones you have. Yeah, go ahead and bring her back to the house with you. I know she and Nanako have gotten close anyway, so she'll be excited."

"And Morgana?" Akira pushes. "He doesn't take up much space."

"The cat?" Dojima asks.

"Cat shaped, anyway," Akira says, even as Morgana yowls the expected protest from the other side of the room.

"Fine," Dojima says. "But that's it, alright? Everyone else will have to find somewhere else."

"Deal," Akira says. "Our summer break starts on the 27th, so I'll see you in ten days."

"I'm looking forward to it," Dojima says. "See you then, Akira."

Akira hangs up the phone and leans back against the wall, looking up at the ceiling with a huge, stupid smile on his face.

He's going _home_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :D :D :D I've been saying since the very beginning of this fic that I had something planned for the late July/August time where Futaba's Palace takes place in the game, and that's why I had to move the Pyramid to earlier. And this is it! The Phantom Thieves go on the road to tackle a Palace in Inaba. I am so excited.


	35. July 23 - July 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before we get into the chapter, yes I know it's only Friday, so this is a little early for me to post. I don't know if this is going to be my only chapter this weekend, I might power through to another one or I might get distracted with some other stuff. We'll see!
> 
> Also, there's an updated list of confidant ranks, which is available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dp--vhU4vvpDhlhG6eL75zS6ItsGrr-u/view?usp=drivesdk

_July 23_

_After School_

-//-

Akira skips school on Saturday.

He leaves in the morning as usual in his Shujin uniform, gets on the train, but then ducks into a bathroom at Shibuya to change into street clothes. He's been gradually getting more of his things from home, mostly thanks to Yu, who has been bringing things back to Tokyo every time he visits Inaba. This includes a hoodie with the name of Yu's college on it, which Akira had gotten two years ago when he came up to visit for a weekend.

No one gives him a second glance when he leaves the bathroom, school clothes bundled into his bag along with Morgana, not the way they would have if he was still in his uniform. Akira figures he's probably just old enough to pass at a glance for a college student, and therefore not someone that truant officers need to be worried about.

"So I guess we're not going to school today?" Morgana asks.

"Nope," Akira says. "I figure it's about time to ambush Akechi about everything. I figured I'll go loiter around outside his school until they get out." He shrugs. "It's Saturday, it should only be couple hours."

"Why today?" Morgana asks.

"I wanted to do it earlier in the week," Akira says. "But since me and Haru have been spending our lunches explaining things to Makoto, it didn't seem fair to ditch on her until she was out of questions."

She'd had a _lot_ of questions about the labyrinths. So had the other Phantom Thieves, for that matter, to the extent that Akira had ended up asking Ann, Ryuji, and Morgana to come up with them one day at lunch so that everyone could hear about it together. 

(Then he'd ended up meeting Yu, Lavenza, Yusuke, and Futaba in Mementos that afternoon to go over the same information all over again, since none of them had been at Shujin to hear that explanation)

(He'd gone over the whole thing for them again from the beginning, explaining everything in detail apart from the second labyrinth, which he'd skimmed over as quickly as possible)

But Makoto is finally satisfied, and a nice side effect of that one lunch they'd all had together is that they'd all had a chance to talk. And more importantly, it's a chance to see that Makoto _isn't_ going to turn anyone in to either the principal or the police. Akira had already been sure she wouldn't, but he has the advantage of remembering her fighting with Johanna in the labyrinths. Now the rest of the Thieves are convinced too.

Privately, Akira thinks that the deciding moment had been when Makoto agreed to come down to Inaba with the rest of them to do Ishikawa's Palace. Ryuji's mom in particular had been very reluctant to okay him traveling out of town for a month with a group of friends to a town she'd never heard of, apparently because she had some doubts about him being mature enough to handle such a long trip.

(Futaba has still not stopped snickering about this)

Apparently having actual student council president Makoto join the trip had made the difference. Ryuji's mom had given her eventual blessing after hearing Makoto would be with them, and that had apparently been the last thing any of the Thieves needed to convince themselves that they should be worried about Makoto.

It'll be interesting to see how things go when they're actually all fighting together, but that's a problem to deal with _later_ , when they get to it.

A problem to deal with _now_ is Akechi. He's talked to the other Thieves about the _Black Mask_ , at least enough for everyone to agree that yeah, they're going to need to confront him, and Akira had been more or less nominated to figure out how to deal with him, and how they're going to tell him that they know who he is. And what he'd done. Akira hadn't told anyone that he was planning on doing it today, but he's not willing to let this sit until after he gets back from Inaba.

Akira's been able to find out where Akechi goes to school just from google. He's a semi-public figure, so his high school is one of the things that his fans (he has _fans_ ) had been able to sniff out and post online months ago. Which is convenient, because Akira can't remember Akechi ever actually talking about his school--he'd never really talked about his personal life at all when they were together.

It takes longer to actually get to Akechi's school than it had to find out which one is his. Akira gets on the wrong train at first ( _he will never get used to Tokyo's subway system_ ), and has to stop to buy food for Morgana as a bribe to get him to promise not to tell anyone else about the misstep. But eventually they make it, and Akira kills some time wandering around the area and exploring until it gets to be the end of the school day.

He finds a relatively discreet spot to hang out and wait, leaning against a wall across the street from Akechi's school and chatting about nothing important until finally the first few students start to trickle out the front doors. The trickle quickly turns into a flood, and Akira keeps a careful watch out for his least favorite detective.

"There he is," Akira says at last, recognizing Akechi as he leaves the school building, managing somehow to look completely alone even in this crowd. "Do you want to hang around for this conversation?"

Morgana thinks about it for a second. "I'll tail you guys," he says. "I feel like you might need a witness in case he tries anything, but he's more likely to talk if it's just you. He never talked to any of the rest of us as much as he talked to you."

"Sounds good," Akira says, and lowers his bag so Morgana can hop out. Then he takes a deep breath, tries to look as composed as possible, and heads out to intercept Akechi. When he's only a couple steps behind him, he calls out and is rewarded by a split second of hesitation from Akechi before the detective turns around to look at him.

"I honestly wasn't expecting to hear from you again," Akechi says smoothly. "One day we're talking about finishing Okumura's Palace together, and then all of a sudden I'm hearing about Okumura's death on the news, and it's like all of you have dropped off the face of the Earth."

Akira considers how he's going to respond to this, and decides to build up gradually. "Well," he says. "I was in a coma for two weeks."

Akechi looks at him, genuinely surprised. Apparently he hadn't heard about this, which is weirdly reassuring. Akechi had been one step ahead of them the entire time they were in Okumura's Palace, so it's hard to figure out exactly how much extra information he has. It's nice to know that he'd missed something this big. "You were what?" he says.

"From the day after Okumura died," Akira confirms. "I woke up a while ago, and I did see the texts you sent me."

There had been a few, all faking outrage that Akechi had been left out of their run through the Palace.

"But I thought it would be better to talk in person," Akira says. "That's why I came here today."

"I hope you have a good explanation for why you did the rest of that Palace without me," Akechi says.

Akira hadn't come here with any intention of lying about what they've figured out. Akechi's been their enemy all along, and maybe Akira's biggest mistake as leader of the Phantom Thieves has been letting Akechi believe they don't know that.

"Sure," he says. "The original plan was to take you with us so you could find out what your real motives were, but eventually after we saw the Palace, we decided there was just too much risk of you doing something if you came back in."

"What kind of risk?" Akechi asks. He sounds confused, but Akira doesn't buy it.

He shrugs. "We didn't know exactly what we should have been worried about," he says. "But since you came back and did something that killed Okumura, we were obviously right to be concerned."

"Excuse me?" Akechi demands. There's a sudden, barely hidden anger in his voice, and Akira's heart speeds up. This is it. Here comes the confrontation. "I didn't do anything to Okumura. If he's dead, it's because you and your team messed up that Palace."

"No it's not," Akira says. "Because we did the same thing we always did. Cut the crap, Akechi. We know you were there."

"I was _no--_ "

"We know you were there," Akira says again, slightly louder as he talks over Akechi's protest. "In your black mask, with Loki, doing something that ended up killing Okumura."

Akechi stares at him. For a second Akira sees clear confirmation that _everything he'd just said is right_ on his face, before Akechi manages to cover it up. "You're crazy," he says.

Akira shrugs. "If that's how you want to play it," he says. "Then that's fine. But you know it's the truth. I know it's the truth. Whatever you want to say, or whatever you want to pretend the truth is, at least going forward from here we'll both be on the same page. If acting like the victim makes you feel better, that's fine. Whatever."

They walk on in silence for several more seconds.

When Akechi speaks again, all the false smiles have dropped out of his voice. "If we're not lying anymore," he says. "Then tell me. What made you so suspicious of me in the first place? Every other Persona-user that you've met is someone you trust. What makes you so set against me?"

Akira considers not explaining. But Akechi has _already_ targeted Naoto just for knowing him. It's not like explaining is going to put her in any more risk, and to be perfectly honest it's hard to think of somewhere that could be _safer_ for her than where she is now, surrounded by Shadow Operatives. "Do you remember Naoto Shirogane?" he asks. "You were the only one that could have had a reason to ruin her life and force her out of Tokyo."

Akechi snorts. "So you've been suspicious since then?" he asks.

Akira nods. "We didn't have any reason to doubt you before that," he says. "And then Naoto shows up in Mementos with all the pieces we needed to figure out that it was you."

"I never suspected she'd actually talk to you ab--"

And then, midsentence, Akechi stops dead in his tracks. He's right in the middle of the sidewalk, so Akira is forced to stop too. "She showed up _in Mementos_?" he demands.

That part had honestly slipped out, and maybe Naoto's going to be pissed at him for revealing her as a Persona-user when she eventually finds out about this. On the other hand, at least Akechi will know she's not completely defenseless if he tries to go after her again.

"Right," Akira says.

"How did she get to Mementos?" Akechi demands, and there's absolutely no trace of his usual cool smile now. So this is the real Akechi, Akira thinks.

Not a very nice person at all.

"Same way as all of us," Akira says. "The app."

"But she--you _told_ her about the metaverse?"

"Didn't have to," Akira says. "She's known about it almost as long as I have. She's had a Persona since 2011."

Akechi stares at him, then barks a laugh and says, "You're kidding."

"Nope."

"That's funny," Akechi says, breaking his stare and shaking his head. "You know, that's really, _really_ funny, because the only reason I needed Shirogane out of Tokyo was because I was so worried about another detective finding out about the metaverse. And apparently she _already knew_."

He's fully stopped pretending now, Akira is relieved to see. This is the conversation he'd wanted to have.

"She knew," he agrees. 

"Fuck," Akechi says eloquently. "So what happens now? What are you imagining our next steps as after this conversation?"

"I figure you'll probably put some more effort into trying to screw us over," Akira says. "You know who all of us are in the real world." Well, apart from Nanako and now Makoto, but there's no point in giving them away. "You were able to ruin Naoto's life, and I'll be honest, I'm sure you can do the same thing to us."

"Easily," Akechi says.

This is the most important part of the conversation, Akira knows. Because if Akechi _can_ actually ruin the lives of his and his friends as readily as he says he can, they're screwed. What he needs to do now is somehow convince Akechi that ruining their lives will be as harmful to him as to the Thieves. "Right," Akira says. "Sure. But whatever you do, you better be one hundred and ten percent sure that it's going to take all of us out of the equation at the same time. You'd better make sure that it takes out all our allies, everyone that knows about the metaverse, every other Persona-user we've worked with."

"You're bluffing," Akechi says. "How many other people can you possibly have told about the metaverse? How many other Persona-users can there _possibly_ be?"

"You didn't know about Naoto, did you?" Akira points out. 

Akechi scowls.

"Exactly," Akira says. "So like I said. Whatever you're planning in the real world, be damn sure you get it right the first time. Because once you bring this fight into the real world, we're not going to hesitate to do the same thing."

"So you'd rather fight in the metaverse," Akechi says.

"I'd rather never have to hear from you again," Akira says. "But I have a feeling that this isn't over yet." For one thing, whatever Akechi's up to in the metaverse, Akira can't imagine it's anything good. He's not their biggest problem right this second, but he is still _a_ problem. "So yeah. I guess I'd like an agreement that whatever's going to happen next, we keep it to the metaverse."

Akechi considers this. Then, to Akira's slight surprise, he nods. "Deal," he says. "I don't want my life ruined any more than you want me to ruin any of yours. So--" He holds out a hand. "Deal. We keep our fight in the metaverse."

Akira shakes on it. He doesn't actually believe Akechi for a second, and anyway there's plenty of damage Akechi can do from inside Mementos and Palaces. But it's better than nothing. Even if it's a complete lie, it's as much as Akira had expected to get out of Akechi today.

"Great," he says, taking a step back. "Then I guess we're on the same page for now."

"I guess so," Akechi says.

Akira turns and walks away--not in the right direction, not the way he needs to go if he wants to head for the train station and then back to Yongen-Jaya. But whatever. He'll circle back around and get to the station in a minute, he just doesn't want to be anywhere near Akechi for another second.

"Akira," Akechi calls, and Akira turns to look at him.

"You should know that you're not the only one with allies in the real world. And one of mine is the same person that's responsible for the details of your probation."

What?

"So if you're thinking that _I'll_ go down easily," Akechi continues. "Think about the fact that you haven't seen your family in months. Think about the fact that you can't go home. And ask yourself if you want things to get any worse."

Akira had thought from the very beginning that the terms of his probation were unfair. Other people had commented on it, on the fact that he's been so thoroughly cut off from everyone he cares about. But he'd sort of assumed that it had more to do with his weird family situation, and the fact that he'd hidden his parents' deaths from everyone for six years. 

Akechi makes it sound like it had been malicious. Intentional. 

"I'll think about it," he says, which is the best comeback he can manage at the moment.

"Do that," Akechi says, and this time he doesn't call Akira back when he walks away.

"Are you okay?" Morgana asks, when Akira goes around the corner and reunites with him. "That stuff he said about your probation--do you think it's true?"

"I think it's a pretty weird and specific lie to come up with on the spot," Akira says. "So it's _probably_ true."

"Do you think that means he can get your probation modified?" Morgana asks. "There's a lot of places you could end up with that would be worse than where we're at now."

"I know," Akira says. "Trust me, I'm thinking about it."

_Think about the fact that you haven't seen your family in months. Think about the fact that you can't go home._

But he has seen his family. He's seen Yu plenty of times, and even Dojima and Nanako have made it up to Tokyo. And he _is_ going home, he'll be in Inaba again in less than a week.

So screw Akechi, if he thinks stuff like that is going to scare Akira off.

"We'll figure something out," he tells Morgana, picking the cat up and scooping him into his bag. "Come on, I want to get back to Leblanc and give Sojiro a head's up that Akechi might try to get at me through my probation."

"He's not going to love that," Morgana says.

Yeah, no kidding.

-//-

_July 27_

_Morning_

-//-

The next few days speed by in a mix of tension and excitement for Futaba. Akira brings home the story of his confrontation with Akechi, Sojiro is predictably not enthusiastic about the idea of being dragged into the Phantom Thieves' fight with Akechi through Akira's probation, and Futaba has spent significant time trying to figure out who exactly had come up with the terms of Akira's probation.

Frustratingly, the only thing she's been able to find out through the publicly available records is that the same person that had accused him of assault in the first place. And since they still don't know who _that_ is, it means that also don't know who had set the terms of Akira's probation, which means they don't know who it is Akechi's working with.

(Futaba isn't exactly _surprised_ at being able to find no new information, because Akechi probably wouldn't have said anything if he'd thought they could get at that information, but it's still intensely frustrating)

She doesn't mention any of this to Akira, though, because Akira is more excited about the upcoming trip than Futaba has ever seen him get about _anything_. Sojiro starts wrangling him into curry making lessons after school, just to distract him a little from being the vibrating ball of energy he's gradually turning into as they get closer to summer vacation.

And then finally the morning arrives. Futaba wakes up early, does all the packing she should have already done but just hasn't gotten around to, and then drags her tired self and her bag down the street to Leblanc.

Akira's already awake and waiting (of course--this _would_ be the one time he's up early in the morning), and Makoto is there too with her own bags. They'd talked about meeting up at the train station, but decided in the end that it would make more sense to congregate at Leblanc and then go all together to catch their train out of the city.

"You look excited to get home," Futaba tells him, dumping her stuff on one of the booths and resting her head on the table. 

"I am excited," Akira agrees. "Here, coffee." 

He's already ready with the mug, and Futaba is more than happy to accept it when he slides it across the table toward her. "Thanks," she says. "When is everyone else going to be here?"

"Most of them are already on their way," Akira says. "They should all be here soon."

And sure enough, it only takes about another half hour for the room to fill up with Phantom Thieves, plus Lavenza, who as far as Futaba knows isn't going to fight with them but _is_ firmly on their side. There's bags everywhere, and the excited feeling that always comes before a big trip. Sojiro feeds them, then tells them in no uncertain terms that they need to leave soon if they want to make their train.

"Keep yourselves in one piece when you're out there," he tells Futaba and Akira.

"Of course," Akira says. 

"I'd be a lot more reassured by that if it wasn't coming from the only person that put himself in a coma," Sojiro says dryly, which only makes Akira laugh.

"We'll come back safe," Futaba tells him, hoping he'll be able to take her at her word a little bit more than when Akira had said it. 

"Keep in touch," Sojiro tells her. "And if anything _does_ go wrong, I want to hear about it."

"Definitely," Futaba says, while mentally adding, _as long as we're not going to get into too much trouble for it._

...Akira's really starting to be a bad influence on her.

"Okay," Akira says, standing up and waiting until he has everyone's attention before continuing. "So we'll have to switch trains a couple times on the way into Inaba, and it's not exactly the most straightforward trip because not that many people actually _want_ to go to Inaba. But me and Yusuke have both taken the trip a few times, so just--please, everyone stick together while we're on the train?"

"I feel like we're about to leave on a school trip," Haru says with a smile. "And you're the teacher lecturing us about behaving ourselves."

"Oh the irony," Sojiro mutters.

Akira laughs. "Yeah," he says. "Everyone remember you're representing the Phantom Thieves on this trip, please cause as much trouble as you possibly can."

There's more laughter at his take on the usual _you're representing our school, please stay out of trouble_ speech that they've all heard before just about every school trip, and that seems to be the cue to get up and start gathering their things so they can head out to the station.

Futaba lingers at the back of the crowd, so that she's the last one out and has just a second or two extra time to spend with Sojiro.

"You're sure you'll be okay?" he asks her. "I know you've been doing a lot better since--well, since Akira showed up. But this is still a big step for you."

"I'll be fine," Futaba says, giving him her best impression of a brave smile. "Akira says his town is tiny anyway. So if there's no crowds, it'll... it'll probably be easier."

Except that she'd rarely been outside the city even before her mom died and she became a shut-in, and there's a not insignificant part of her that actually is scared of this trip.

And maybe Sojiro sees that, because he wraps her in a hug. Futaba closes her eyes and breathes in the smell of coffee and curry. 

(She understands, suddenly, why Akira is so excited to go home. She hasn't even left yet, and already she finds herself feeling homesick to be back here again)

"I know you'll be fine," he tells her. "I know you will."

She loves that he believes in her, right in the second when she's staring to question herself. It buoys her up, and lets her pull back and give him a smile. "Of course I will," she says. "I'll call you when we get there."

"Good," he says, and gives her a slight push. "Now go catch your train."

She goes running out the door, to meet up with her friends, and catch her train.

They _do_ catch the train on time, and they make each of their connections, too. Futaba picks window seats every time, and watches the scenery outside the window change from city to suburb to mountainside scenery. 

They talk about the Palace they're about to fight their way through, and pitch different ideas about how they're going to get past the whole breathing underwater issue. There's no definite ideas yet, but they have a month to figure it out, and the conversation quickly moves on to teasing Morgana after he makes a comment about not looking forward to doing the whole thing underwater.

("This is because you're a cat, isn't it?" Ryuji asks. "It's the whole cats hate water thing?")

(" _I am not a cat!_ ")

They play card games, and moan about their exam scores, which only Makoto (unsurprisingly, as the only one that hadn't been part of the Phantom Thieves before sitting for the tests) had done super well at. On the other hand, only Ryuji had actually failed _any_ of them, so really it could have been worse.

And then suddenly there's an announcement on the train's PA system that they're coming into Yasoinaba.

"This is it," Akira says, standing up and reaching for his bag. 

"Is anyone meeting us?" Yusuke asks.

"Nah," Akira says. "I thought about asking a couple people, but honestly it's not that much of a walk."

"We're all staying at the Amagi Inn," Yusuke says. "Right?"

"Except for me and Futaba and Morgana," Akira says. "Because--"

"Because you want to be at home," Yusuke finishes for him. "Obviously." He smiles, looking like he's remembering something. "The Amagi Inn is a good place to stay, though. It's where we first met."

"Oh yeah," Akira says with a laugh. "I wonder if you guys'll get the same room as when you stayed there with Madarame."

"I hope not," Yusuke says.

"Nah," Akira says. "Yukiko's the kind of person that would think of something like that. I'm sure she'll put you in a different room."

The train rolls to a stop, and the Phantom Thieves gather their bags and head out to Inaba.

-//-

_July 27_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Akira feels something in his chest relax the second he's off the train and standing at Inaba Station. There's a feeling here that he's never had anywhere else, a sort of sense that this is a place that has been touched by the metaverse. And maybe that should have been a bad thing, but to Akira it's just another thing that makes Inaba feel so much like home.

"Oh wow," Futaba says, stopping dead in her tracks at his side. "There's something about this place, isn't there?"

"It's been too close to the metaverse too many times," Akira says. "You can just tell, can't you?"

"Yeah," Futaba says. "It's--weird?"

" _I_ like it," Akira says.

"Of course you do," she says with a laugh.

He watches her watching his town, hoping she'll like it. He's hoping _all_ of them like it, and there's a part of him that's a little bit nervous about what they're going to think. Inaba is _not_ Tokyo, and Akira has a hard time thinking of two less similar places to compare.

"I'll give you the tour on the way," Akira says. "We won't see the whole town, because I know everyone has bags and stuff, but we'll see a part, anyway."

"Any chance we can see the school with the Palace in it today?" Ann asks. 

"That's way up at the edge of town," Akira says. "And I checked with Nanako, their summer break doesn't start until Friday. So there's probably going to be teachers and things hanging around this afternoon, even after classes are over."

"And you think it would be better not to be seen?" Makoto asks.

"I think any group of high school students hanging around an elementary school is going to look weird," Akira says. "So it's probably safer to wait until they're all out on break to really start checking it out." 

"Plus Nanako will never forgive us if we go without her," Yusuke says.

"You're not wrong," Akira says. "Should we get going to the Inn?"

And so they do. He takes them through the most straightforward route possible as they walk to the Amagi Inn, thinking that no one is going to want to go for a wander before they even get to where they're staying. But there's _no_ route they could have taken that wouldn't have led them past years worth of memories for Akira, and he can't help pointing things out as they go.

He has stories, a lot of them, and he knows he's talking practically a mile a minute as he points things out explains things, as he shows them the ways the town has changed and gotten better in the five years he'd lived there.

And then finally they reach the Inn, Yukiko is there and waiting and ready to show everyone where they're staying. 

"Do you want to stay and eat, Akira?" Yukiko asks. "Or are you headed straight home?"

"I really want to get home," Akira says. "It's been--I mean, it's been a really long time."

Her expression is sympathetic. "Of course," she says. "I'm sure I'll be seeing you soon enough, anyway."

"I have a feeling I'll be around here a lot while all my friends are staying," Akira says. 

"I'm sure," Yukiko agrees with a laugh. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"See you tomorrow," Akira says. "And thanks for having everyone to stay. I, um..." He hesitates, not sure if he of all people should be apologizing for potential trouble. On the other hand, he knows for a fact that they _will_ be loud. "If anything goes wrong, you can call me. Or talk to Yusuke."

"I'm sure it'll be fine," Yukiko says, which just goes to show that she hasn't heard enough about what kinds of trouble they've been getting into back in Tokyo.

And so then it's just the three of them left that aren't staying at the Inn. Akira looks at Futaba and Morgana, and asks, "You guys still okay with coming back to the house with me? You wouldn't rather stay with everyone else?"

"I'm used to staying with you, anyway," Morgana says cheerfully. 

Futaba nods. "You're supposed to be watching out for me anyway," Futaba says. "Sojiro will be _very_ disappointed if you ditch me now."

"Oh geeze," Akira says, making a face. "He'd probably kick me out just for that."

"Probably," Morgana agrees. "So are you going to take us home or what?"

They move a little bit slower now, both because they've lost some of their momentum now that they're just a trio and now a whole group, and also because Akira has somehow ended up carrying Futaba's bag as well as his own. 

"I can't believe this is the kind of place you came from," Futaba says, as they eventually get to the neighborhood where the Dojimas live. 

"Why not?" Akira asks. "I've told you about Inaba before. You knew what it was like."

"Yeah," Futaba says. "And you did a pretty good job of describing it. But... I don't know. Seeing it's something else. And it's so _different_ here from Tokyo."

"No kidding," Akira says.

"I just mean that you--I don't know. You fit in really well back home," Futaba says. "But this sort of feels like it's a different planet."

Akira shrugs. "I mean," he says. "I get what you're saying, because I always _hated_ Tokyo before I had to go live there. But I guess there's some things that are the same."

"Are you sure?" Futaba asks, making a show of looking around at the small town scene around them. "Because I'm not seeing it."

Akira shrugs. "Listen," he says. "The first time I went to Tokyo, like I said I hated it. I _seriously_ hated it. I was eleven, and it was just this huge city that I didn't know how to get around in, and there was only one person in the whole city that I'd ever even met before." He shrugs. "But when you get to know people, and you start to find places that feel like home, you can surround yourself with the things that matter. You kind of build yourself a place where you can fit. It's the same thing whether you're in Tokyo or someplace like Inaba."

"You're weird, Akira," Futaba says.

"Yep," Akira agrees. "Anyway, it's just around the corner here." He points, and leads her down the street to the Dojima house. Dojima's car is in the driveway, which means that at least he's expected. It's still early enough in the day that he _should_ still be at work, and Akira feels a sudden twinge of guilt at how much time off Dojima must have taken for him already this year. 

"I'm home!" he calls, kicking off his shoes by the door, and is met with an instant shout of excitement from Nanako. She comes running down the stairs, half jumping at him and half hugging him--Akira just barely manages to hand Futaba's bag back to her before Nanako gets to him.

"Why didn't you tell me when your train was getting in?" she asks. "I wanted to come meet you all."

"We can manage to walk home from the station without an escort," Akira says.

"I know you _can_ ," Nanako says. "But I _wanted_ to see you."

"You're right," Akira says. "I'm sorry, I should have told you. Next time."

"Did you get everyone settled up at the Amagi place?" Dojima asks, and Akira looks past Nanako at where he's setting up their usual convenience store dinner.

"Yep," Akira says.

"And did you thank them for giving everyone space to stay?"

" _Yes_ ," Akira says, managing to only roll his eyes very slightly. "Anyway, we are paying."

...well, Haru's paying, but only because she'd absolutely put her foot down on the idea of anyone else pitching in. As she pointed out, she's the only one here that's recently inherited a fortune, it just makes sense to have her fund this trip. It would have tough but doable for all of them to split the cost among themselves, but Haru literally won't even notice the money is missing.

"Is Futaba staying up in Nanako's room?" he asks. "I can get her stuff moved up there."

"Yep!" Nanako says. "Come on, I cleaned up and set up a place for you to sleep."

Her room does _not_ look noticeably cleaner to Akira, but only because she's the neatest eleven year old he's ever met, and he doesn't think he's ever seen her room messy in the first place. But Akira leaves the two of them unpacking Futaba's things and getting her set up, and goes across the hall to his own room.

It hasn't changed.

In a way, that surprises him. _He's_ changed, in the four months since he got to Tokyo, and it feels... off, now, to come home and find out that it hasn't changed with him after all. Apart from the missing things that are sitting in his attic room over Leblanc, everything looks exactly the same as how he'd left it that last day when he was arrested. He'd had _no_ idea, when he walked out of the house that morning, that he wouldn't be coming back after school. He'd had no idea that the next time he walked through his bedroom door, he'd be the leader of a group of Phantom Thieves, on a quest to defeat some kind of god of control, and only partly human. 

He turns to the TV against the wall, and--just to prove to himself that he still can--sticks his hand through. It passes as easily as it ever had, and Akira feels that familiar sucking sensation of the TV World trying to pull him in. But he's seventeen, and much too tall to pass through this old TV, so after a few seconds he's able to pull his arm back out instead of being drawn back in. He flexes his hand that had been inside the TV, making a fist and then relaxing again. He's back. He's _home_.

Akira unpacks the things he'd brought with him from Tokyo, putting them away in the same places they'd been taken from all those months ago. There are a few new things, stuff he'd bought since coming to Tokyo, that feel weirdly out of place now that he's back here. He throws them wherever, because he's never been as tidy as Nanako, and he's totally fine with that. In a way--well, in a weird way, today reminds him of the day he'd first come here when he was eleven, unpacking the few things he'd decided were important enough to bring with him. Clothes and souvenirs and a few pictures of his parents...

He pauses with one hand still on his bag, wondering suddenly where that stuff has ended up. The clothes he'd outgrown within a year, obviously, those are long gone. But it's been a long time since he even looked at any of those other things. With everything that's happened lately, he wouldn't mind... well, he wouldn't mind taking those pictures back with him when he gets back to Tokyo.

It takes him close to twenty minutes of digging through his room before he finally finds the box of old memories. He's sitting on the floor with his back against the sofa, pulling the pictures out when he hears a noise by the door and looks up to see Morgana.

"I met your cat," Morgana says, clearly unhappy. "I think she's in heat."

"Sorry," Akira says, wincing. "Hang on, I'll shut the door so she can't get in here."

"Thanks," Morgana says, and by the time Akira has gotten up to shut the door (he _can_ , in fact, hear Shadow yowling from somewhere downstairs), Morgana is sitting at the spot where Akira had just been looking through his box of old memories. "What's this?"

"The stuff I brought with me when I first moved to Inaba," Akira says. "I don't know, I was just feeling nostalgic, coming back here."

"Can I see?" Morgana asks.

"Sure." Akira says. "It's nothing much, mostly just some old pictures." He sits back down with Morgana, and moves some stuff around so they can both see. Morgana leans forward, peering at one of the photographs.

"Are those your parents?" he asks.

"Yeah," Akira says. "Well, them and me, when I was a lot younger." 

"You look a lot like your dad," Morgana says, when he's watched Akira flip through the thin stack. 

"I guess so," Akira says, looking down at the pictures himself. The last time he'd looked at these, _years_ ago now, he hadn't really grown up enough for the resemblance to be obvious, but... yeah. It kind of is now. Except for his dad's grey eyes, it would have been easy to imagine that Akira will look just like him in a few more years.

Except for the eyes, because his dad had died human.

"Look," Akira says quietly, putting the pictures back in the box. "When we talked a while ago, about... finding out where you came from when I was down in Mementos. I didn't want to insult you."

Morgana looks down at his paws. "I know," he says. "I just--didn't want to hear that I wasn't ever really human."

"I know," Akira says. "Trust me, I get it, because I'm not really human either, anymore."

"At least you still _look_ human," Morgana says miserably. After a few seconds though, he looks up at Akira. "So--can you tell me what I am? If I'm not--if I'm not human?"

"Not exactly," Akira says. "I think Lavenza probably could. But what I know is that when the Velvet Room was attacked, Igor... well, he made you you as a way to help take the imposter down."

Morgana nods. He looks sad. "I guess that's not the worst place I could have come from," he says. "At least I was supposed to do some good."

"Listen," Akira says. "Where you come from doesn't matter. You're a friend, you're a member of the Phantom Thieves, you're a part of the family. That stuff matters a lot more."

"If it doesn't matter where people come from," Morgana says quietly. "Then why are you sitting here looking at all your old stuff? Isn't it because it matters to you where _you_ came from?"

That's a fair point, Akira has to admit. His first gut reaction is to say that Morgana has never actually been human, he'd only thought he was. Akira _had_ been born human, he'd been human for the first seventeen years of his life, and then that had been taken away from him.

But that's stupid and selfish. That's just pretending that what he's going through is more important than what Morgana is dealing with. But they're both hurting. They're just coming at it from different directions.

"Okay," Akira says. "You're right, I'm sorry."

Morgana sighs, and slumps a little bit. "It's okay," he says. "But it--it _does_ matter to me that I'm not human. Just like it matters to you that you're not completely human anymore. Because it's something important that neither of us wanted to lose, right?"

"Right," Akira agrees.

The two of them sit in silence for a little while. Eventually, Morgana says, "I didn't mean to say that you shouldn't miss your parents."

"I wasn't going to stop," Akira says, with a flicker of a smile.

"And you know what?" Morgana says, standing up with a fresh determination. "Maybe I... maybe I _wasn't_ ever human. But if you can stop being completely human, maybe I can get to be at least a little bit human. There's all kinds of weird things in the world, right? Maybe there's something that'll help."

"Anything's possible," Akira says. 

"Yeah," Morgana says. "Yeah, new goal--that's what I'm going to try to do."

"You know what," Akira says, leaning back against the sofa and smiling more than he has since this conversation started. It might be a longshot, because he has no idea if it's even the same thing, but at least it's an idea. "You really need to talk to Teddie while we're in town."

-//-

_July 28_

_Midnight_

-//-

Makoto often has a hard time sleeping the first night away from home, and she's not surprised when this trip does not turn out to be any kind of exception. If anything, this is even harder than a normal trip, and her mind absolutely refuses to quiet enough for her to get any good sleep.

Two weeks ago, she hadn't had anything more than vague suspicions of who the Phantom Thieves are. She hadn't been anywhere near being able to guess _how_ they do what they do, and she'd completely missed the fact that Haru has been recruited into the group. Now, suddenly, she's been accepted into their group, she has a Persona, and she's agreed to come with them on a summer vacation trip that had been fairly tricky to justify to Sae.

(In the end, she hadn't been able to come up with a satisfactory explanation for why she needs to go away with her friends for a month)

(What had convinced her sister instead had been the fact that it will be a lot easier for Sae to keep up her long hours at work over the summer if she doesn't have to share the apartment with anyone else)

She's decided to take this path, and so she's determined that she's not going to second guess herself. But there is still a lot to adjust to and there has not been enough time to do that adjusting.

At a little before midnight, when the other girls have dropped off into an early sleep, Makoto gets tired of tossing and turning. She heads quietly out of the room she's sharing with Haru, Ann, and Lavenza, thinking that a walk to the lobby and back might at least settle her swirling thoughts.

It's mostly quiet around her as she walks. There are some muffled thuds from the boys' room, but Makoto hesitates to say anything. For one thing, she assumes that it will only start an argument that will be louder than their current noisemaking. And for another, she's not sure if she has the standing to do that, as the newest and most uncertain member of the Phantom Thieves.

So she just walks on, listening instead to the sound of late night rain on the Inn's roof, until she gets near the lobby, and hears new sounds from another direction. She stops, and hesitates some distance away. There's someone else awake, and Makoto finds herself heading in that direction solely because she wants to know who else is around. 

Yukiko Amagi--the Inn's manager, and Akira's... friend or acquaintance, it's hard to tell which--is sitting in a lounge off in a side room. It looks like the room has been recently renovated or modernized, which probably explains why it's been hidden in such an out of the way corner of the otherwise very traditional Inn. It makes a kind of sense--give guests somewhere to watch TV and get some more modern connections to wherever they'd come from, but it doesn't interfere with the aesthetic of the place the same way that it would have if it had been front and center.

Makoto is just about to tiptoe away, when she realizes that it's very strange for the manager of an Inn to be sitting here in the middle of the night, intently watching a TV that is turned _off_. In her surprise she stops short, half tripping and making a noise in the quiet hallway as she does so.

Yukiko turns, a slightly guilty expression on her face, which melts away when she recognizes Makoto. "Did I startle you?" she asks. "I'm sorry, I know it's a little bit creepy to stumble on someone sitting here in the dark in the middle of the night."

"I'm fine," Makoto says quickly. "I was just a little surprised." She hesitates, then says, "Do you mind if I ask what you were doing out here? You looked a little intense."

"I always watch for the Midnight Channel when it's raining out," Yukiko says. "I know it's been a long time since it was on, but you can never be too careful, and if anything like that ever happens again... well, there's not that many of us that could actually do anything about it."

"The Midnight Channel?" Makoto asks. "What's that, exactly?"

"Akira hasn't mentioned it?" Yukiko asks. "I'm surprised."

"If it's something to do with--with the metaverse," Makoto says. "I'm pretty new to knowing about all that." She brushes her hair away from her face with one hand, a nervous and self-conscious gesture. 

"Oh of course," Yukiko says. "You would be the one that got added to the trip at the last minute, weren't you?"

"More or less," Makoto says. "I haven't even had a chance to fight any Shadows, I don't know if I _can_ actually fight Shadows, so I'm not... really sure what I'm doing here."

She's not sure why she's saying all this, especially to someone she's only just met. But she somehow can't imagine saying it to any of the Phantom Thieves, who she still feels are doing her a favor by bringing her along in the first place. And she has to say it to someone, so why not...

"You'll be fine," Yukiko says. "You'll find the reason that you're here, even if it takes a little bit longer than you want it to."

"You sound so sure," Makoto says.

"I am sure," Yukiko tells her. "I've seen it happen. I've had it happen to me. You're going to learn things about yourself that surprise you, and you're going to find a way to fit in."

She's quietly confident--poised in fact--and that does a lot to reassure Makoto. She's asked a lot of questions and gotten a pretty full story about what the Phantom Thieves have really been up to since (and before) their official debut with Kamoshida's change of heart. But there's a half frantic energy between them all that Makoto doesn't find particularly reassuring. She's hitting the ground running here, and she's not all that sure she can pick things up on the fly.

"Is this because of..." She's taking a stab in the dark here, but Yukiko had talked about Midnight Channel in the same tone that the Thieves use when they explain the metanav. "Is this about the Midnight Channel? You didn't really explain what it is you're watching for."

Yukiko tells her now, though, and Makoto listens to a story that sounds only slightly less insane because Makoto has already heard so much about what's going on in Tokyo. Honestly, she's not as interested in the details of how everything had worked out as she is in the reassurance that they _had_ worked out.

It feels a little bit more comfortable to dive face first into the metaverse, now that she knows it's something that can be survived, and that other people have in fact _already_ survived. It feels less like jumping in blind now that she knows more of the history of what exactly she's getting herself involved in.

She doesn't completely understand everything, yet. She's hoping that she will, that once she's had the chance to actually try fighting for herself, and once she's had the experience that everyone else has. But Yukiko's explanation does a good job of bridging the divide for Makoto between the things she knows and understands, and the things that everybody _else_ knows and understands about what's going on here.

"Thank you," Makoto says at last. "It's getting late, and I'm sure you'd rather be in bed yourself, so I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about it."

Yukiko stands up. The sound of the rain outside has lessened and petered off into almost nothing, so that by this point it's just the two of them alone in the nearly silent Inn. "I didn't mind at all," she assures Makoto. "And if you happen to have any other questions, or need to talk while you're here...."

"Thank you," Makoto says again. "I... should probably get back to the room. I have a feeling tomorrow's going to be busy, and I want to get some sleep before then."

"That sounds like a good idea," Yukiko says with a smile. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight," Makoto answers, and retraces her steps back to the girls' room. Everyone else is still asleep, and none of them stirs as Makoto finds her space between them all. Today has been strange--tomorrow, she is sure, will be stranger.

-//-

_July 28_

_Morning_

-//-

Akira wakes up on his futon, in his own bedroom, and for half a second he feels disoriented and confused. Then he remembers that he'd come home yesterday, that he's going to be here with the Phantom Thieves until the end of August. And he smiles. 

Morgana's already awake, sitting on the window ledge and watching the street outside with his tail twitching slightly, so Akira doesn't worry about waking him as he sits up and starts looking for clean clothes. He can hear voices from across the hall, telling him that Nanako and Futaba are awake too. 

"So what are we doing today?" Morgana asks. "Trip to the Palace?"

" _Maybe_ ," Akira says. "But I'd rather wait until after tomorrow, when the elementary school is out for summer break. In the meantime I was thinking maybe we could go into the TV World and give Makoto a chance to get used to fighting with her Persona."

"That's a good idea," Morgana says. "If that Palace is underwater, it's not going to be the best first experience for her."

"Right," Akira says. "Exactly. So I figured we'd go in and just beat up some Shadows for a while. I think that if we all go in together, we can probably handle the club?" He frowns. " _Maybe_ the laboratory, but that might be pushing it, especially while Makoto's still getting the hang of things."

"You'd know better than the rest of us," Morgana says, hopping off the windowsill and giving an impressively full bodied stretch. "So do we really just go in through any old TV?"

"Any TV that's big enough," Akira says, and demonstrates by pushing his hand through the one by the door, even as he keeps talking. "We could use the one downstairs, Dojima bought a bigger one than he said he would have otherwise so I could go in on weekends. But I sort of don't think he's going to love everyone trekking in and out of here."

"Uh," Morgana says "Do you think you could maybe take your hand back _out_ of the TV while you're talking? It's distracting."

"What?" he looks down at his hand. "Oh, right. Sorry." As always, it takes a little bit of effort to pull his arm back out, but he manages that in the end without too much drama. "Anyway, I figure we can meet everyone up at Junes. It's pretty much tradition to go in through the electronics department there anyway."

"Junes is one of those big department stores, isn't it?" Morgana asks.

"Yep," Akira agrees. "The only one around. And not really all that big, compared to what you'd see in Tokyo. But it has a TV display, and we'll be able to get in through there. Plus Teddie still works there, so we can talk to him before we meet up with everyone, if you want."

"Teddie's the bear," Morgana says, his voice edging toward wariness. "Right? The one we talked about last night, who grew himself a human body?"

"That's him," Akira says. "He was up in Tokyo a few weeks ago when everyone met up, but I don't know if you had a chance to talk to them."

"No," Morgana says. "I think I remember seeing him, but there were a lot of people around."

"Right," Akira says. "So I can introduce you today, and you can talk to him if you want."

"Maybe," Morgana says, and then looks away from Akira with such obvious intentionality that Akira decides not to press any more. This is probably something for Morgana to deal with on his own, if he wants to. Akira's not going to force him to do anything he doesn't want to do, or isn't ready to do.

"Up to you," Akira says. "But at least I'll introduce you, and then you can make up your mind about how much you want to say."

Morgana hesitates. Then he says, "Sure. That sounds good."

"Cool." Akira grins at him. "Then let's get going."

And Morgana is suddenly and visibly _nervous_. "Do you think the cat will be downstairs?"

"You mean Shadow?" he asks. "Yeah, almost definitely." He catches Morgana's expression, and adds, "We'll keep her away from you."

Morgana seems slightly mollified by this, so Akira heads downstairs to clear the path of any cat related obstacles for Morgana. Shadow is asleep on top of the fridge, but Akira is tall enough (and he's done this enough times by now) to reach up and grab her before she can bolt.

"You could just let her sleep," Dojima says from the kitchen table, where he's getting his things together before leaving for work.

"Apparently she's been chasing Morgana around," Akira says. "I'm going to see if Nanako will let me shut her up in her room until we leave."

"You're going to the school today?" Dojima asks.

"Probably Junes, actually," Akira says. "I think it'll be better to wait for break to start before we look at the Palace, so it doesn't look too suspicious for a bunch of high schoolers to be hanging around the elementary school. But I wanted to show everyone around the TV World."

"Just be careful," Dojima says.

"Of course."

He scoffs. "Don't _of course_ me," he says. "You're never careful. You go looking for trouble and you find it. But this time you're not even supposed to be here, and just because we're pretty sure that most people won't want to turn you in, it doesn't mean that _nobody's_ going to say anything." He lets this linger for a second, then repeats, "So just this once, please be careful."

"Got it," Akira says. "I'll keep my head down. As much as I can."

"I guess that's as much as I can ask for," Dojima says. "I'll see you tonight."

Akira waves goodbye, deposits Shadow with Nanako and Futaba, and tells them that he can have breakfast ready in five minutes.

"What's for breakfast?" Futaba asks. She's spread out on a pile of blankets on the floor, her laptop open in front of her. 

"Probably toast," Akira says. 

"You should cook something," Futaba says, without taking her eyes off the computer screen. "Sojiro's been teaching you, right?"

"Are you learning to cook?" Nanako asks, looking up from where she's packing her backpack at her desk. 

"Just curry," Akira says. "And I think the last time we had any fresh ingredients in here was when Yu stayed."

"So let's _get_ some ingredients," Futaba says. "Then we don't have to keep having toast for breakfast."

"You eat Sojiro's curry five times a week," Akira says. "Don't you want to eat something different while you're out here?"

"Not if it's _toast_ ," Futaba says.

"I want curry too," Nanako says. "Can you make some, Akira?"

She looks so hopeful that Akira can't bring himself to say no. "Fine," he says. "I figure we'd go up to Junes today to show everyone the TV World. We can get curry ingredients too."

" _Yes_ ," Nanako says. "I can't wait!"

She pulls on her backpack, and waves before running out the door. "I'll see you guys after school. Bye guys! Bye, Morgana!"

After she's gone, he and Futaba have toast for breakfast. Morgana has cat food, and expresses that he would rather not keep eating from Shadow's supply--he has, after several months of eating nothing else--grudgingly settled for a diet of cat food. No matter what he might _actually_ be, the fact is that his digestive system seems to match up pretty well to a cat's, and nobody really wants to risk accidentally poisoning him by feeding him something cats aren't supposed to eat.

Sharing a food supply with _an actual cat_ is apparently too much for his pride, however, and Akira adds a new brand of cat food to the list of things to pick up when they're at Junes later in the day.

Speaking of which, he really needs to let the rest of the group know what they have planned for the day.

> **Phantom Thieves**
> 
> Good morning everyone! 
> 
> **Akira:** Since the elementary school still has classes today, I thought we could go into the TV World today
> 
> **Futaba:** Also he is making curry tonight and needs to buy ingredients, and apparently we can do both those things in one trip
> 
> **Ann:** You cook, Akira?
> 
> Yeah, Sojiro's been sort of teaching me
> 
> **Haru:** I'd like to try your curry :)
> 
> So I guess I'm cooking for everyone now?
> 
> **Futaba:** Yep :p
> 
> **Yusuke:** We also need to make a stop to buy weapons this morning

"Oh _no_ ," Akira says, on reading Yusuke's message. "I didn't even think that Makoto would need weapons--there's just been so many other things going on."

"We can still get that stuff here though," Morgana says. "Right?"

"Yeah," Akira says. "We can stop by the metalworks, no big deal. There's all kinds of weird stuff there."

> **Phantom Thieves**
> 
> No problem, we can meet up in the shopping district on the way to Junes to get Makoto some stuff
> 
> **Makoto:** Actually, since I knew there would be fighting, I brought some of the wraps and gloves I use in martial arts classes
> 
> That'll work, and we can always upgrade if you need it
> 
> **Ann:** So I guess we won't need to stop for weapons after all?
> 
> **Yusuke:** We still will, as apparently Ryuji forgot all his equipment in Tokyo
> 
> **Ann:** Ryuji :(
> 
> **Ryuji:** I know, I know, I ALWAYS forget something when I go on a trip
> 
> **Ryuji:** Usually it's my toothbrush, this time it was my bag of metaverse stuff
> 
> **Ryuji:** I left it all right by the door too, my mom's going to freak when she sees it
> 
> **Yusuke:** If you all want, I can just show Ryuji where the metalworks is and then meet you at Junes after
> 
> **Haru:** Lavenza says she knows where we'll be meeting at Junes, so she can show the rest of us
> 
> Perfect, see you guys around 10?
> 
> **Yusuke:** See you then

Akira puts his phone away, then hesitates as his eyes land on Futaba. He's just had an idea. "Hey," he says to her. "You know how you got your old phone set up for me when I got to Tokyo? Because mine was confiscated?"

"Yeah," Futaba says. "Why?"

"I guess my old phone got returned after the arrest," Akira says. He'd spotted it up in his room yesterday, while he was digging through stuff for his box of the things he'd brought with him when he first came to Inaba. "Do you think you could get it set up for Lavenza?"

"Oh yeah," Futaba says. "You want to bring it down here? I can get it set up before we leave, it'll take like five minutes. And if she's going to be in the real world for a while, I mean--you basically need a phone to even function, don't you?"

"Pretty much," Akira admits. "Unless you're Morgana, because he has no thumbs."

 _"I heard that!"_ Morgana calls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Real quick, I just want to say thank you to everyone that took the time to comment and be concerned about my irl stuff that might be interfering with regular updates. I've made some unexpected progress in getting that stabilized this week, and I'm hoping I won't have to skip any chapters for at least the next month, fingers crossed.
> 
> ALSO I'm only halfway through the second area of strikers, no spoilers in the comments please!


	36. July 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, there was a time when I was younger when I was like man I should really learn how to draw, and then instead I spent twenty years learning how to write. And I'm not saying that was a bad decision, writing is awesome, but it's getting to the point where I really wish I could draw out teen Lavenza xD
> 
> (If anyone reading this is arty and wants to take a stab at it I will absolutely love you forever)

_July 28_

_Morning_

-//-

It actually takes about half an hour for Futaba to get Akira's old phone wiped and set up with service again, but only because both of them had forgotten that he'd have stuff on it that will need to be transferred over. Contacts and pictures and all the things that he really _should_ have had backed up already, but apparently hadn't bothered with.

(She lectures him on this for a while, as they're waiting for everything to be moved)

But eventually the phone's ready, Akira throws it in with his metaverse stuff to give to Lavenza when they all meet up, and the two of them plus Morgana head out for Junes.

They're walking again, which Futaba had expected but is still not a fan of. Inaba is a lot smaller than Tokyo, so walking everywhere isn't as much of a problem as it would have been at home. And seeing so many less people out on the streets is definitely helping with the lingering anxiety that still bothers Futaba a little bit while she's outside in Tokyo, as much as she tries to pretend that it doesn't.

But Tokyo is also _flat_ , and Inaba is up against mountains, which means that even here in town there are hills and inclines and it's just generally harder to walk around. Futaba does not _like_ exercise. 

It gives them time to talk, though. As they head in what seems to Futaba to be a completely random direction, in a route that Akira seems to know like the back of his hand, it's easy to slip into the kind of easy conversation that doesn't really pass in Tokyo where anyone could hear. It's almost weird to be able to talk openly about their upcoming trip into a TV to fight Shadows without worrying that someone's going to overhear. There's no one around here, so there's obviously nobody listening. The few times they pass other people on the street, they just stop talking for a few seconds before starting up again.

It just feels... quieter? Slower? Different.

Akira's different too, Futaba sees now that they're here. He's gotten more comfortable in Tokyo, in the few months since she first met him. He's learned how the trains work--mostly--and how to be just another face in the crowd. He'll always stick out a little because... well, because he's Akira. But he _opens up_ in Inaba in a way that Futaba's never really had a chance to see before. There's an under the skin defensiveness that he's carried with him for as long as Futaba's known him, and which she's long since gotten used to and stopped seeing. 

It's gone here. Maybe he doesn't feel as safe in Tokyo as he does here. Maybe it's homesickness, or just the totally understandable stress of everything that keeps going wrong. But whatever it is, it's like he's keeping his guard up all the time in the city, and only here does he feel safe enough to relax.

It makes her a little bit sad, actually. Because Akira is someone that's come to matter a lot to her since she's met him, but this is making her realize that there's a whole important piece of him that she's never even seen. That she never could have seen if they hadn't left Tokyo to come here, and that he'll probably lose all over again when they go back to the city. That's not his home. 

(It reminds her that they're going to have to say goodbye, some day)

(But... not today. Not for a long time, so for right now she can just be happy that _he_ is happy too)

"I guess that's it?" she asks, as a building with a large _Junes_ sign across the front comes into sight.

"Yep," Akira says.

Futaba can't exactly see what the big deal is about this place. It looks a little out of place in Inaba, which so far seems to be made up of buildings that are old and worn in. This is just a squat cube of a concrete building surrounded by parking lot. It doesn't look like it quite fits in, exactly.

They're a little early, so instead of heading right for the electronics department where Akira says the TVs are, they just wander around and kill time. Akira has promised to pick up curry ingredients, but he absolutely refuses to get any this early. 

"We're about to go fight Shadows," he points out, when Futaba nags him about it. "I'm not dragging a bunch of ingredients around."

"You're going to be dragging a bunch of stuff around anyway," she points out. "All the weapons and healing items and everything."

"Yeah," Akira says. "But that stuff's not going to taste worse if it's being knocked around all afternoon."

Futaba sighs, but gives in. "Fine," she says. "But we still have like an hour before everyone else is going to get here, what are we supposed to do to kill time?"

"I wanted to go track down Teddie," Akira says. "Hopefully he's working today."

"Who's Teddie?" Futaba asks.

"One of Yu's friends on the Investigation Team," Akira says. "You remember, he's the one that was a mascot suit when we all met up in Mementos."

"You mean he was _in_ a mascot suit," Futaba says.

Akira hesitates, and kind of makes a face before saying, "Sort of? Teddie's weird."

"Are you trying to say that he actually is a mascot suit?" Futaba asks.

"Technically he's a Shadow," Akira says. "Who _looks_ like a mascot suit, but also he grew himself a human body at some point, so now he's a Shadow that looks like a human inside of a mascot suit."

He says this all completely casually, and without any attempt to keep his voice down. Futaba instinctively looks around, but relaxes when she realizes what Akira must have already seen--that there's no one in this part of the store at this time of day except the three of them, and--just like on the street outside--no one who's going to overhear.

"Come on," Akira says, pointing vaguely into a deeper part of the store. "We might as well go look for him, no point just standing around here and talking about it."

And then he starts moving before Futaba even has a chance to open her mouth and ask why he wants to talk to Teddie, specifically.

-//-

_July 28_

_Morning_

-//-

Yusuke and Ryuji split up from the girls when they get to Inaba's small shopping district, heading for the metalworks shop where Yusuke knows Akira buys his equipment when he's not in Tokyo. Yusuke's only been there once or twice himself, but Daidara recognizes him as 'that weird painter kid that hangs out with Akira,' and allows him access to the metaverse equipment that he'd started making for Yu five years ago, and then kept on selling to Akira.

"Why does he even have all this stuff?" Ryuji asks Yusuke. "There's more stuff here than there is at Untouchable."

"He makes all of it," Yusuke informs him.

"No kidding?" Ryuji says. "That's awesome."

He's enthusiastic, which doesn't really surprise Yusuke because Ryuji has always been the most excited about upgrading their weapons and equipment whenever something new shows up at Untouchable. Yusuke's sort of gotten the impression that it annoys the store owner there, which is one of the reasons why the occasional trips out there for supplies have become Akira's responsibility.

The difference between Iwai and Daidara, though, is that the metalworks shopkeeper _makes_ everything he has in his shop. There's a certain professional artistic pride in the way he reacts to Ryuji that Yusuke both recognizes and respects.

They spend way too much time there, deciding what to get for Ryuji and then picking through the rest of the merchandise just out of sheer curiosity. When they finally pick out a weapon and armor for him, it's ten minutes before they're supposed to meet everyone at Junes. Yusuke knows that Inaba is small, but not small enough that they can run all the way up to the department store to make it on time.

"Think we should try running?" Ryuji asks, looking at the time on his phone.

"I don't think there's much point," Yusuke says. And also, he does not enjoy running as much as Ryuji does. "We might as well just let them know we'll be late, and--"

Someone up the street shouts, and after a couple of repeated calls, Yusuke realizes that they're trying to get his and Ryuji's attention. He turns around, not sure who here would be calling them here, of all places, and sees an unfamiliar boy about their own age torpedoing up the street toward them.

"Who's that?" Ryuji asks, in the few seconds before the stranger can reach them. 

"No idea," Yusuke says, but since there's no avoiding a confrontation now, he turns to the other kid and waits to hear what this is about.

"Hey," the guy says, a little short of breath from his run, and looking at Yusuke specifically. "You're that guy, right? From back then with all that stuff?"

Yusuke and Ryuji exchange a _what is he even talking about_ look.

"You know," the guy insists. "With the coliseum?"

There's a pause, while Yusuke still doesn't get it for a couple seconds. Then he does.

"Oh!" Yusuke says, his eyes going wide as comprehension hits him like a physical blow. "Daiki?"

"Yeah! I _knew_ I recognized you. You look a lot like you did back then."

Daiki does _not_ look very much like he had back in 2011, when Yusuke had gone into the TV World with Akira, Lavenza, and Teddie to rescue him from a gladiator coliseum. Yusuke remembers him as a mean faced kid, bigger than he and Akira had been back then. Not someone that he'd really wanted to spend any time with after they'd rescued him, especially with the kind of stories he'd heard from Akira about how he acts at school. He's grown up since then, though, and even though he's still sort of huge, a lot of the meanness has gone out of his face. He's smiling, too, which isn't an expression Yusuke remembers seeing on him back then.

He knows that Akira had ended up friends with Daiki after everything in the TV World, but since he's never had a chance to see Daiki for himself, Yusuke hasn't quite been able to connect the dots between the jerk from elementary school and the kind of person Akira has described to him more recently. It's a little bit easier, now that he's seeing for himself the way Daiki's grown up.

"I didn't realize who you were at first," Yusuke says, relaxing out of his initial surprise. "Why were you shouting for us?"

"Just figured I'd come and ask what you were doing here," Daiki says. "I ran into a couple of the guys from school yesterday and they _swear_ they saw Akira up by the Amagi Inn yesterday. And now you're here too, so it sounds like maybe it's actually true?"

Yusuke considers for about half a second whether or not to say anything. He probably would have been evasive, if he hadn't known that Daiki _is_ actually one of the people that Akira trusts. And Yusuke trusts Akira, so that works for him. "Yes," Yusuke says. "He's back until summer break ends at the end of August. We--a few of us from Tokyo came with him."

"Oh, okay," Daiki says. "Cool. I'll have to drop by sometime and say hey. Maybe find out why he fell off the face of the Earth for a couple months."

"He was arrested and put on probation," Yusuke says.

"I know _that_ ," Daiki tells him, rolling his eyes. "Everyone knows that, no one was talking about anything else at school for like a month after it happened. But since when does that matter to Akira?"

"I think it spooked him," Yusuke says. "The arrest. But he's back now, and I'm sure he'll be happy to hear from you."

Daiki nods. "He's still staying with the Dojimas, I guess?"

"Yes," Yusuke says. "But listen, can you keep this a secret? He's still technically not supposed to be here."

"Sure," Daiki says. "I mean, like I said, I heard he was back from some of the guys, so I'm sure it's already spread around. But no one's going to turn him in."

"I hope not," Yusuke says.

"Nah," Daiki says. "Akira's kind of a weird guy--"

"Understatement," Ryuji mutters.

Daiki continues, voice thoughtful. "But he's like.... I don't know. He's _our_ weird. No one's going to sell him out."

Yusuke wishes he could be as certain as Daiki sounds. Maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong, but Yusuke's still worried about his friend. He doesn't think he'll be completely done worrying until after they're all back in Tokyo, and Akira is no longer actively violating his parole.

(On the other hand, he's been worried for completely different reasons when Akira was keeping his head down and cutting himself off from his family just because of his probation, so this is still probably better)

"Well, we'll see you around," Yusuke says.

"For sure," Daiki says, and then when Yusuke and Ryuji have made it halfway down the block, Daiki calls out after them. "Hey!" he shouts. "Did Akira come back just for a visit?" he asks. "Or is it all the weird rumors and stuff?"

"Weird rumors?" Yusuke repeats.

"You know," Daiki says. "Like before, it was all related to the that crazy Midnight Channel rumor, right? And now he's back, and you're back, and I even heard a rumor that girl he used to like is back. So I thought it might be something like that again."

"It doesn't have anything to do with any rumors," Yusuke says, because as far as he knows, no one's saying anything about Ishikawa's Palace. The fact that it's still related to something in the metaverse is something Yusuke will leave up to Akira whether or not he wants to explain.

"Oh," Daiki says. "Okay, cool. Just wondering." He heads off in the opposite direction, giving a vague wave. "See you guys around."

"That was weird," Ryuji mutters, as the two of them watch Daiki head out. "That guy is one of Akira's friends?"

"Yes," Yusuke says. "Although the last time I was here, he was beating Akira up and stealing his shoes."

Ryuji looks at him sideways. "And they're friends now?"

Yusuke opens his mouth to explain the whole story of the coliseum, but then hesitates. Looking back at it now, with the benefit of hindsight, knowing what he does now, and being a member of the Phantom Thieves, he thinks he recognizes something familiar in those memories of that five year old summer. The coliseum had been a part of the TV World, they hadn't gotten in through the app, and there hadn't been any Treasure. But in a way it had been their first Palace, hadn't it?

"He had a change of heart," Yusuke says. "Now come on, we're _definitely_ going to be late."

-//-

_July 27_

_Morning_

-//-

Lavenza hasn't been to Inaba in five years, and she's surprised at how familiar it seems. There have been changes, definitely, but they're _good_ changes. The town looks less rundown in places than it does in Lavenza's memory. There are more shops, and fewer empty houses. The small town isn't _quite_ as small. It's more lively in a way she appreciates. 

(Once, the people here had quietly given in to the effects of an otherworldly fog. Had been ready to lie down and die)

(She likes to see that the town has grown. That the people here have--for lack of a better term--given up on giving up. The fog has faded, leaving a scar, yes, but one that can be lived with)

She listens to the conversation more than she contributes as she walks with Haru, Ann, and Makoto. She's thinking back on the memories she'd made during the year that the fog of the metaverse intruded into the real world, and there are more than she'd realized. She'd spent time here with Akira, first in an attempt to keep him busy and away from TVs, and then because he'd become her friend. She knows the best places in Inaba to go for food, or for fun. She knows what to do on a rainy afternoon, or on a too hot morning.

She hasn't come _back_ like this, before. She's seen many places in her life, few of them as small and as apparently uninteresting as the tiny town of Inaba. But this is the first chance she's ever had to leave and come _back_ to a place, and she's surprised at how nice it feels.

The closest thing she's ever felt is the moment when she walks back into the Velvet Room after a little time away. This shouldn't feel the same, it's only a little human town, but it _does_. She's happy to be here.

(And then, immediately, guilty for the feeling--she does not know when she'll be back home in the Velvet Room again)

(She is not, in her heart of hearts, completely convinced that she will even be welcomed back into the Velvet Room, when all this is over. She's changed. She's _different_ , she's been different since she was fused back together, and she's become increasingly worried about it as the days go by)

"Can I ask you a question, Lavenza?" Ann asks.

She has to ask it twice, because Lavenza is so lost in thought that she doesn't hear him the first time. When she does finally realize, she forces down the nagging worry, gives Ann an apologetic smile, and says, "Of course."

"Are you going to fight with us when we go into the TV World?" Ann asks. "Or in Ishikawa's Palace?"

A difficult question. Lavenza had never--or rarely, in any case--fought Shadows with or for Akira when he'd been younger. But that had been in a different circumstance, when he'd been learning from her instead of charging ahead, and she'd had Igor back in the Velvet Room reminding her not to get too involved.

There's no Igor now. There's also no Velvet Room. 

What is her _role_ now?

(Who is she, now? She knows that she has changed, she _fears_ that she has become more human--too human to help)

"I don't know," she says slowly. "I _can_ fight, but..."

She trails off, not sure how to finish the thought. It's not even a matter of being too powerful anymore, she's not worried about the idea that she might take up too much space in a fight, and get in the way of her trickster learning something that needs to be learned. She has been cut off from the Velvet Room. She has been torn in half, and then healed in a way that fundamentally changed her.

(There is a piece of her now that has been with Akira for five years. That piece of her has learned... possibly _too much_ about what it means to be human)

(She doesn't think that she's as strong as she should be)

"I don't know if I can fight in a way that will be helpful," she says, after too long of a pause. "I've never been in a situation quite like this one before."

"I'm sure you'll be able to help," Haru says. "You know a lot more about all this than the rest of us do."

The two of them have been having occasional conversations about the metaverse, in the days since Lavenza has moved in with Haru as a more or less permanent houseguest. Lavenza has been careful in what she says, out of sheer habit if nothing else, but she's sure that Haru has picked up on the fact that this is, and always has been, Lavenza's world.

"And that might be the way I can best help," Lavenza says. "I have no intention of only watching, if you're worried about that."

"No," Makoto says. "Of course not. If anything, I'm sure that I'll be the one holding us back when it comes to fighting."

And Lavenza is more than happy to jump in as everyone else rushes to assure her that she'll be fine, and that fighting with her Persona will be more natural than she thinks it will be.

No one asks Lavenza any more questions about her plans for the TV World, which she is grateful for. She doesn't say anything else during the rest of the walk, apart from a few comments about directions as they get close to Junes. 

She assumes that the other three will be up on the rooftop cafeteria, and she's partly right. Akira's sitting at the table that Lavenza associates in her memory with the Investigation Team, scrolling through his phone with one hand, his chin propped up on the other hand, looking bored.

His face lights up when he sees them head over though, and he laughs. "I was really starting to wonder if everyone forgot we were meeting up today, or got lost or something."

"Speaking of getting lost," Makoto says. "Where's everyone else?"

"Morgana's talking to Teddie," Akira says, pointing down to the other end of the roof, where Lavenza can in fact see Teddie. Morgana isn't visible from this far away, but after all he is much smaller. "And Futaba got bored waiting and went to look around."

"What about the boys?" Ann asks.

"I'm definitely getting worried about Yusuke and Ryuji," Akira admits. "I haven't heard anything."

"Well," Haru says. "They did have to stop and buy equipment first."

"It shouldn't be taking them this long, though," Akira says.

They start speculating where the two boys might have gotten to, the guesses getting more wild and less likely as time passes. Futaba rejoins them after a while and then Morgana a few minutes after that--Futaba jumps right into the conversation with an immediate guess that Ryuji's mom had come down from Tokyo to drag him back after finding his metaverse stuff, but Morgana stays quiet and thoughtful.

And eventually Yusuke and Ryuji _do_ make it to Junes, with the explanation that they'd taken their time in the metalworks shop and then run into Daiki on the street outside.

"Daiki from the coliseum?" Lavenza asks, leaning forward with interest.

"You knew about that too?" Ryuji asks.

"She was with us," Yusuke confirms. "And Teddie."

"Is Teddie coming in with us now?" Ryuji asks. "Or--I dunno, any of the other people here that used to go into the TV World?"

"I was just talking to Teddie," Morgana says. "He has to get back to work."

"Imagine that," Yusuke says. "Teddie is growing up."

Lavenza bites back a smile. Good for him, she thinks. Finding a way forward for himself in the world.

"Did you get what you wanted out of the conversation?" Akira asks.

Morgana stands up, looking a little rattled. "Maybe," he says. "I don't think so, but _maybe_? I need to think about it more."

Lavenza shoots a curious look at Akira, expecting trouble as always, but he only half shrugs apologetically at her. Well, maybe whatever Morgana and Teddie have to talk about is none of their business.

"I guess we're ready to go in now?" Haru asks. "Everyone's here and fully equipped, so..." She looks briefly uncertain. "It's time to go inside a TV?"

"Yep," Akira says. "Come on, we'll head down to the electronics section."

It's in the same place now that it had been five years ago, Lavenza sees. She watches Akira check the same corners that he'd checked when he was eleven, looking around in practiced motions to make sure that no one's looking at them.

"Okay," he says at last, approaching the large central TV in the display. "This is it."

"This?" Ann asks. She sounds a little hesitant, Lavenza notices. Akira glances back at the group, and then his focus narrows in on herself and Yusuke--he grins, clearly excited about the fun of the spectacle that comes with going into the TV World in front of people that aren't expecting it.

"Yeah," he says casually. "Watch."

He grips the top of the TV, using it to balance for a second as he steps through as easily as if he were passing through a window. He swings one leg over the bottom edge, then the other, and then lets go and is gone.

"He's nuts," Ryuji mutters under his breath. But he's the first one to follow Akira in through the TV, half tripping as he passes through, but making it nonetheless. The others hesitate a little, but then Futaba follows, then Ann and Morgana, and finally Haru and Makoto.

"Are you alright?" Lavenza asks, when she realizes that the only person left with her on the outside is the person she thought would have stepped through immediately after Akira.

"Just thinking," Yusuke says. "That first summer, I never would have imagined coming back here with a group like the Phantom Thieves."

Lavenza nods, understanding. "But here we are," she says. "Shall we go in?"

"Let's," Yusuke agrees, and passes in through the TV ahead of her.

-//-

_July 27_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Akira has a straight up _fun_ time bringing his friends through the TV World for the first time. The metaverse in Tokyo is one thing--fun in its own way, but also stressful because of what it represents (because of what _failure_ there represents). But this is his childhood, a low stakes place to fight Shadows and get used to a Persona, safe as long as he doesn't bring them into areas he doesn't think they're ready for, safe as long as no one gets on the wrong side of a _hama_ or _mudo_.

They go to the club at first, because Akira is _pretty_ sure they'd all be able to handle the laboratory, but doesn't think it would be fair to force Makoto to push hard during the very first trip into the metaverse that she'll be able to remember. The club has Shadows that they can all handle a little more easily, and although Akira has to give a hasty explanation and apology for the general atmosphere before they go inside, it turns out to be the right decision. Makoto is surprised by the first few fights with Shadows, but rallies quickly and before long she's right up there on the front lines with the rest of them. 

Akira has a chance to replenish his stock of Persona too, which is sort of a relief. They'd all (well, all but Arsene) been driven out of him when he was in the Sea of Souls, and the only time he's been back in the metaverse since then has been the brief trip into Mementos with Futaba, Morgana, and Sojiro. Since he'd been intentionally trying to keep fights to a minimum for Sojiro's sake, there hadn't been a chance to talk to any new Shadows on that trip. This time, he intentionally goes about recruiting as many new Persona as he can manage, until finally he's as satisfied as he can be with what he has.

Ryuji's the one that asks about the coliseum after a while, and when the whole story of his and Yusuke's encounter with Daiki in the shopping district comes out, Akira agrees to take them to the coliseum. The Shadows are weaker there, so it won't get as much practice in after they move over there, but that's fine. They've done enough training in the club, and Akira is as confident as he can be that they'll be totally ready for Ishikawa's fishbowl when they go there Saturday.

...well, they still don't have any plan for breathing underwater, so maybe not _totally_ ready, but Akira's hoping that he'll get some kind of idea when they get there and see it for themselves.

So they head into the coliseum, and kill some time wandering around there. Without the threat of high level Shadows that the Thieves are just barely equipped to be able to fight, the coliseum goes much more smoothly. They split up a little, they hang out, they just... generally have a good time. 

And Akira even gets a little bit of time to corner Morgana on his own, and ask him how the conversation with Teddie had gone.

"I didn't.... really know how to bring it up," Morgana admits, not quite looking at Akira as he admits this. "It just felt..."

He trails off, but Akira nods in understanding anyway. It's easy to imagine that this would be a hard thing to talk about with someone he's only just met. "Well," he says. "We're here until the end of August," he says. "If you decide to change your mind."

Morgana shoots him a grateful look and says, "Maybe if I do try and talk to him again, you could come with me for the conversation?"

"Sure," Akira says. "I know Teddie pretty well. He didn't turn me in to everyone else when they all thought I was evil, so..."

Morgana's grateful look turns exasperated. "Why is everything you ever talk about from your past so _weird_?" he asks.

Akira shrugs and grins.

He's not sure how long they spend in the coliseum before finally agreeing to head out. It's always kind of hard to get a read on how much time is passing inside the metaverse, and that's the same whether they're in the TV World or Mementos or a Palace. Akira's guessing it's been _maybe_ four hours today, but he's not completely sure. Either way, it's probably enough for one trip. 

Especially since he's apparently been volunteered into making curry for everyone tonight.

"I'll meet all you guys up in Junes in a couple minutes," he tells his friends when they've made it back to the stack of TVs that represents a way out of here. "Lavenza, do you mind if...?"

There's no reason in the world that he can't talk to her back in the real world, but it feels somehow more natural to have serious conversations with her in the metaverse. And anyway, if they're sure that everyone else has already gone back, it's guaranteed to give them a little bit of privacy if they stay.

"Is there something you wanted to talk about?" she asks, a flicker of surprise on her face.

"If you're not busy," he says.

"Of course not," Lavenza says.

 _Make out_ , Futaba mouths at Akira, and he turns red and points at the stack of TVs. She's still laughing when she heads out with everyone else.

"What did Futaba say?" Lavenza asks.

"Nothing," Akira says quickly. "And thanks for hanging around, I wanted to talk to you--" Is this something Morgana's going to be pissed at him for sharing? He pushes on anyway. "I wanted to talk to you about Morgana, actually."

"What about him?" Lavenza asks. She settles herself on the ground near the TV stack, so Akira does too. They sit shoulder to shoulder, in the middle of a world full of Shadows and fog, and talk.

"Well," Akira says. "We know where he comes from now, but that hasn't really stopped him from feeling like--well, like he wants to be human, even though now he knows for sure that he's not. And I can totally understand that, because I'm not... exactly human anymore either, so I told him I'd try and figure out a way to help him."

Lavenza doesn't say anything, but she makes a thoughtful humming noise that shows she's listening.

"He's going to talk to Teddie too," Akira continues. "Because he was kind of in the same place back in 2011, until he grew himself a human body."

"That wouldn't be exactly the same," Lavenza says. "Teddie is a Shadow, and Morgana is..." She seems to be weighing her words as she considers the best way to phrase it. "Morgana is something closer to a cognition," she says at last. "A cognition of my master's, which makes him stronger than others you may have seen in Palaces. It's why he's able to exist in the real world and not just the metaverse."

"So the same thing that worked for Teddie wouldn't work for Morgana?" Akira asks.

"It would not," Lavenza confirms.

Akira sighs. "Well, I guess at least that means that there's less pressure for Morgana to talk to Teddie about it. I think he's feeling self conscious. Does that mean there's no way for him to ever be human, though?"

"I don't think it would be impossible," Lavenza says, after thinking it over. "It would be much easier if my master were still here, because Morgana came from him. And I don't think, if he could see the ways that Morgana has grown, that he would have any difficulty in seeing Morgana as growing toward humanity."

"But there is another way to do it?" Akira asks. "Since Igor is--you know."

Lavenza bites her lip and looks away. She looks more uncertain than he would have expected. "Possibly," she says. "I think that I... might be able to do something? But I'm not _sure._ "

"You're not sure?" Akira echoes. "Lavenza..." 

Now it's his turn to hesitate. He doesn't want to say exactly what's on his mind, because what he's thinking is that she sounds uncertain and unhappy in a way that he's not used to hearing from her.

Lavenza looks at him, and there's an open vulnerability in her eyes. In the long pause that follows, as she seems to be struggling with the decision of whether to say anything at all, a part of Akira hurts for her.

"It's just funny," she says at last, her voice low and a little bit hoarse. "That he wants to be human so badly. And the very reason I can't help him is that I fear I've become _too_ human since I came back."

" _You_?" Akira asks. "Too human?"

(But he has noticed, hasn't he? That there's something about her that's a little bit less otherworldly. That there's more color in her face, more... humanity)

(It's an almost perfect mirror of what he's seen in himself lately)

"Ever since we were ejected from the Velvet Room by the imposter," Lavenza tells him. "Ever since I was put back together. I know myself, and I know that I have not been the same."

"Did we do something wrong?" Akira asks. "Did we--"

She shakes her head. "No," she says. "You and Elizabeth did everything right, and I'm very grateful to both of you for doing it. But--a part of what happened that day was the piece of me that was with you returned to me."

Akira stares at her, sudden guilt clawing at his chest. He knows why he's not really completely human anymore. It's because of his time in the Sea of Souls. But Lavenza hadn't been through anything similar, so the most likely explanation for why she'd changed like this is because something human had come back to her during that fusion.

"Some of my humanity went back to you?" he asks her.

"Some of me learned to be human while it was with you," she corrects. "But it's more or less the same thing."

"I'm sorry," Akira says. "I didn't know..."

He remembers the feeling, when she'd given him the piece of herself all those years ago. Remembers how it had felt to know that she was trusting him with something so important, and even the little thrill of knowing he had something he shouldn't. It sounds like maybe she would have been better off if she'd never given that piece to him for safekeeping in the first place.

It sounds like maybe he hadn't done such a good job of keeping her safe.

"It's not your fault," Lavenza says immediately. "It's _not_ , Akira. But what you and Morgana are both feeling about not being human--I'm feeling it too. From the other direction, you could say. I don't have a role to play anymore, I don't know who I'm supposed to be. And I don't know... I don't know how to _live_ with that."

Akira stares at her, totally at a loss for what to say.

And then, unexpectedly, she starts to cry. 

-//-

(There is so much of herself, Lavenza thinks, that she _does not understand_ anymore. She has spent the long forever of her life so far knowing exactly who and what she is, and learning that is no longer true is almost physically painful in a way that has somehow boiled to the surface now that she is back in this place she knows so well)

-//-

Akira is frozen in surprise for a few seconds, and then he leans over and hugs her, pulls her in close and lets her cry into his shoulder. Maybe there's something to Lavenza's admission that she is more human than she knows what to do with, because Akira has never seen any resident of the Velvet Room cry before.

But _he's_ cried. He's comforted other people when they've cried, and he knows that what Lavenza needs is to get this out of her before she's able to process it. He'd cried, when he first woke up in the hospital. He's pretty sure that Morgana _would_ have cried by this point, if cats were physically capable of it. He doesn't blame Lavenza at all for being overwhelmed.

"It's going to be okay," he promises her. "We're all in a weird place right now, and we're all trying our best to figure out how to live with it." He doesn't know if these are the right words, but he can't just let her cry in silence. He has to say _something_ to her, to let her know that she's not alone. "And listen, I know you want to be _less_ human when me and Morgana want to be _more_ human, but--please don't feel like you have to figure it out by yourself."

Which is when a not-quite-new voice says, "Of course you do. Who's going to be there to help you?"

And Akira looks up at something he never would have thought he'd see, and makes uncomfortable eye contact with Lavenza's Shadow.

-//-

_July 27_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Lavenza's first thought on seeing her own Shadow is that this is exactly what she doesn't want to deal with right now. She should not _have_ a Shadow, it should not be possible, and the fact that this is happening now is just more proof of what already has her so embarrassingly upset.

She's human. Or partly human. More human that she _wants_ to be. 

(No. _No_ , she is not ready to accept the idea that she is human enough to have a _Shadow_ )

"Being a human with a little bit of lost humanity is one thing," her Shadow tells her. "But what are you supposed to do when you're something _else_ that has to learn to be human?"

She has gone completely stiff against Akira, and she can feel him holding her more tightly in response. They both know what's happening, and that should make it better. Instead, somehow, it makes it worse. Lavenza _should_ be strong enough to accept herself. She _should_ be strong enough to tell her Shadow that it is only a part of herself, and that it is a part of herself that she can live with. 

But she doesn't think that she can do that. She doesn't think she's ready to be something so different from what she's always been before.

"What are you good for?" her Shadow asks. "Not as powerful as you should be. Not as strong. There's no place for you in a story like this one, and you know that."

"Lavenza," Akira says, and all she wants to do is tell him--

_(not to let go, not to leave her alone)_

\--to just walk out of the TV right now, so that at least he won't have to hear the things her Shadow is saying. The fact that every word is true doesn't make her hate hearing them any more. If anything, it only makes them worse.

"And what do you think is going to happen when all of this is over?" her Shadow asks. "Do you think that something broken is even going to be let back _into_ the Velvet Room?"

A Shadow is always going to know the best thing to say to get under the skin of their other self. A Shadow is _always_ going to know what words are going to hurt the most, and Lavenza's has found exactly the right--or maybe exactly the wrong--words to say.

She's not human, and she's not what she had been before, either. What is she supposed to do to help free the Velvet Room and her master? And if they succeed, after everything is back to normal, what is she supposed to do then?

"I know that there's no place for you," her Shadow says. "Not in this world or in any other. I know that _you_ know too." 

She smiles, and in that smile is an expression so fully human that everything in Lavenza wants to rail against it.

"After all, I am you."

" _No!_ "

The shout comes from the deepest part of her soul, tearing out of Lavenza without any input from her mind, hoarse and broken sounding in her own ears. And in that moment Lavenza feels more defeated than she ever has. She feels broken, she feels _worthless_. Her Shadow sheds its normal looking appearance, surging upward, growing into something powerful and dangerous.

And the only thing Lavenza wants to do is curl up and disappear. She doesn't want to be here anymore. She doesn't want to fight, and she honestly doesn't even believe that she _can_ , right this second.

Akira, of _course_ , manages to look at this and still somehow smile. This is the lowest that she has ever felt, and he's still looking at her with his trickster's smile on his face, reassuring to her in the same way that it would have made her nervous on anyone else. "This seems familiar," he says, pulling her to her feet with a grip that's gentle but insistent with the necessary urgency of the situation. "Only I'm pretty sure it was the other way around last time."

Last time?

(Of course--five years ago, they'd stood in the TV World, not far from here, and a terrified Akira had shouted his denial of his own Shadow)

(She'd fought his Shadow for him then, because he was a powerless eleven year old, but he can't be suggesting that he's going to fight _her_ Shadow on his own, is he?)

(...why would she think he's suggesting anything else?)

She watches, arms wrapped around herself, half numb with confusion, as he _fights her Shadow_. He's spent most of today recruiting Shadows and that turns out to be a good thing because he has to use every one of them in his battle against what has turned into an enormous, mutated butterfly.

She barely knows what's wrong with her, except that this is her worst fear coming to life. This is indisputable proof that she's become more human, she's _human enough to have a Shadow_ , and this is the one thing that she never wanted to have happen.

Akira struggles, but in the end--and with no help at all from Lavenza--he _wins_.

A part of Lavenza is relieved. Of course she doesn't want Akira hurt. Of course she doesn't want her Shadow to bring him down. But at the same time...

At the same time, the fact that he can fight her Shadow alone tells her that she is not as strong as she needs to be. Her Shadow is a reflection of her. She _should_ be stronger than this.

(Less human than this)

When it's over, and the horrible Shadow has collapsed back into something that looks like her again, Lavenza sees Akira turning back toward her. There's a question in his golden eyes, behind his mask, and Lavenza understands exactly what he's asking her.

She knows what the right answer is.

She knows that she can't give it. She knows that she can't accept that this Shadow is a part of her, because that would mean accepting that she's no longer the person she always thought she had been.

Lavenza half turns away and drops her gaze.

No, she can't accept this.

-//-

_July 27_

_Afternoon_

-//-

Akira hadn't realized that Lavenza is hurting this badly. He's been caught up with a million other things since he woke up from his coma, and he hadn't realized that she was _hurting_.

He's going to have to be better about that from now on, and he's ready to start now, in the moment that she turns away from accepting her Shadow.

"Listen," he says quietly, crouching down in front of where Lavenza's Shadow has fallen on the ground in front of him. "I know that this isn't how it's supposed to work. I know that you're her and she's you." He jerks his head back toward where Lavenza is very definitely looking in the other direction. "But I've carried a part of her before. And if you'd be willing to stay with me until she's ready to accept you, I know that I'd be willing to do that."

Lavenza's Shadow doesn't answer for a long time.

Akira waits, heart beating too fast. He's not sure exactly why Lavenza is so reluctant to accept her Shadow, but he knows that it's a hard thing to do. 

He also knows that she's strong. There might be a time that she regrets giving this up. If he can carry her Shadow and her Persona for her until she's ready for them, he'll do that.

The Shadow nods, after what feels like far too long, and then shimmers away into almost-nothing. In the end, all that's left is a mask, blue and shaped a little bit like a butterfly, with wings trailing down the sides. Akira reaches for it, grabs it, lets it rest in his hands. It's softer than his own mask, and definitely brighter in color. But it has the same kind of energy that he's learned to recognize from his own mask, whether that's Arsene or a recruited Persona.

He raises it to his face, feels it fade, and runs his fingers around the edges to make sure that his own mask to make sure it hasn't changed in any way. It still _feels_ the same, the shape and the weight are exactly the same as they've always been. It's only on the inside that anything feels different, and _that_ is strange.

Akira's used to recruiting other Persona during fights with Shadows by now. He's been doing it for five years, and there's a place inside him where those other Persona live.

Lavenza's is different. Lavenza's Persona is _not_ like a Persona that comes from a Shadow. It's vibrant and alive and unique, the same way that Arsene is completely unlike any other Persona he's ever had before. He is _carrying Lavenza's Persona,_ and that is a different kind of responsibility.

He goes back to her now, back to where she's still standing, still obviously upset. He's not even sure if she knows what he's just done, and he doesn't think this is the right moment to try and explain. 

"Do you want to talk about this?" he asks.

"Not really," Lavenza says. "But I am--I'm sorry that you had to do that. Alone."

"I didn't mind," Akira says, even though he's hurt, even though he's spent everything that he has in him in that last fight. The point is that he'd made it. "And I'm okay, honestly."

(And so is your Persona)

"Do you want to go somewhere else?" he asks. "Before anything else happens?"

"That might be a good idea," she says, with a forces smile. "Yes."

So they leave the TV World, and Akira makes a point of avoiding anywhere he thinks the other Thieves might be on their way out of Junes. That... probably makes him a bad host, actually, but he tells himself that he'd be doing the same thing for anyone else if they were going through the same kind of thing Lavenza is right now. And he does at least stop to text the others when they hit the street.

> **Phantom Thieves**
> 
> Hey, I know we were talking about curry tonight
> 
> But something came up and I don't think that can happen now
> 
> **Futaba:** With Lavenza? ;)
> 
> ...
> 
> Listen, I don't want to get too much into her problems because it should be up to her who knows what, but she's having a rough day
> 
> **Haru:** Oh no :(
> 
> **Yusuke:** I thought she's seemed quiet
> 
> So everyone's okay with curry tomorrow?
> 
> **Futaba:** Yeah. And I'll pick up some new cat food for Morgana before we leave, since we were going to buy that today too
> 
> Thanks

He walks with Lavenza away from Junes, to the Samegawa flood plain where they can sit at the old gazebo and talk.

But neither of them says anything at all for a while. Akira doesn't know what Lavenza's thinking about, but he's preoccupied with adjusting to the presence of her Persona in his head.

(Psyche. He knows her name the same way he'd instinctively known Arsene's in the first moments after he'd accepted him)

(...this is not going to be an easy secret to keep, if Lavenza isn't ready to hear about it relatively soon)

"I'm sorry about what happened," Lavenza says after a while. Akira, who has been completely lost in his own thoughts, snaps out of his distraction. It's starting to get dark around them, afternoon passing into a comfortable summer evening.

"Are you feeling any better?" Akira asks.

"Yes," she says. "I just... I wasn't expecting that."

"It feels like at some point it should stop being a surprise when one of us has to face our Shadow," Akira says. "But it's like--somehow, it's _always_ a surprise."

"This time more than most," Lavenza says. "I'm not human. Or--I never _used_ to be human. So finding out that I was human enough to have a Shadow really threw me." She hesitates, then adds, "And I don't mean... I can see how it would be insulting to hear that it's that upsetting to be part human. And I'm sorry."

"I completely get it," Akira says quickly. "It's not _being human_ that's freaking you out, right? It's changing, and not having any control over it, and not... not knowing what you're going to be when it's all over."

"Yes," Lavenza says softly. "That's exactly it. I don't know who I am, and I always have, before."

"You and me and Morgana should start up some kind of support group," Akira says. "A 'what species even are we' anonymous."

She laughs, but in a way that's clearly only to humor him. "I don't think that will really do much good," she tells him.

"No," he says. "Probably not. But you do know that we're here for you, right? I know you're coming at it from a different direction, but we're all just trying to figure out what we are and where we're going to fit."

He really wishes that he could give her more than that, but the truth is that he isn't all that much better at dealing with his changes than she is at dealing with hers. 

"I don't know if there's a place for me anymore," Lavenza says. "The things my Shadow said--I know you understand how it works. I know you understand that they're things I was already thinking."

He nods. 

"What is my place supposed to be, now?" 

"It's probably going to have to be something you make for yourself," Akira says. "I mean, I don't know as much about, like... _anything_ as you do. But it sounds like all this is kind of..." He chooses his words carefully. "Not something that's happened before?"

"Not that I have ever heard of," Lavenza says. "It's fair to say that we're in a unique situation. Or at least so rare that it's functionally unique. I don't know of anything that might actually help."

"There you go, then," Akira says. "Whatever's going to happen, we need to figure out how to make it work for ourselves. And I'm not... I have no _idea_ what's going to end up happening to either of us, but--" He gives her a wide grin, to cover up the fact that what he's about to say is simultaneously unbelievably cheesy, and something he means completely wholeheartedly. "But there's no one else I'd rather be going through all thiswith."

She looks at him for a long time and then, just when Akira's starting to think that there's absolutely nothing he can say that's going to help her feel better, she relaxes. It's not a significant change, but he sees it and he's relieved. 

"We're going to get through this," Lavenza says. "Aren't we?"

"We are," Akira says. "I know that you're new to the whole being in over your head thing, but I've had no idea what's going on for about five years, and it's worked out okay for me so far."

"That makes me feel a lot better than it probably should," Lavenza admits.

"You'll get used to it eventually," Akira tells her. "It's not as bad as it seems." 

They sit together in the following silence, side by side, listening to the quiet noises of Inaba around them. He wants to tell her she's going to be okay. He wants to tell her that he's not going to leave her alone to figure it out, not ever.

(He wants to tell her that he loves her too much to leave her on her own)

(He's not going to ask her to deal with his feelings when she's already having a hard time)

"Oh hey," he says instead. "I forgot, I had something I was going to give you today."

He pulls out his old phone that Futaba had gotten hooked back up earlier in the day, and hands it over. "So you can get in touch if you need to," he says. "And you'll be in on the group chat and everything."

"Thank you," Lavenza says, turning it over in her hands. 

"Of course," Akira says. "Anything I can do to help."

She lets out a deep breath and stands up. "Do you think we could walk around for a while?" she asks.

"Sounds great," Akira says. Which is how the two of them end up wandering through the quiet streets of Inaba until long after dark, talking about everything and nothing until both of them feel comfortable again.

(He keeps wondering if he should say something about Psyche)

(He keeps not doing it, keeps changing his mind at the last second)

(Today's been hard enough, and... he thinks that it can wait a little bit longer)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the commenters that helped me decide on a Persona for Lavenza :) There were multiple good ideas thrown around a few chapters ago, but this is the one that really stuck out to me, so this is what we're going with!


End file.
